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UNITED STATES OF AMERICA. 






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CHRIST 



AND MODERN UNBELIEF 



BY 



RANDOLPH HARRISON M C KIM 

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Rector of the Church of the Epiphany 
Washington , B.C. 



u Can there any good thing come out of Nazareth? . . . Come m 



ie awl see." 






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THOMAS WHITTAKER 

2 and 3 Bible House 
1893 



Copyright, 1893 
By THOMAS WHITTAKER 






The Library 

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171, 173 Macdougal Street, New York 



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Co 
THE ST. ANDREW'S BROTHERHOOD 

WHOSE CHOSEN AIM 

IS TO BRING YOUNG MEN TO JESUS 

I DEDICATE THIS VOLUME 

IN THE HOPE THAT IN THEIR HANDS 

IT MAY HELP SOME TO RECOGNIZE 

IN THE MAN OF NAZARETH 
THE MESSIAS — THE CHRIST OF GOD 



* Cjjrifiitttfii, si non T)tuz, non fcontta; 



PREFACE. 

I yield to the request of some who heard these 
lectures and give them to the press because I 
want to bear my small part in the work of helping 
honest doubters to solve the doubts suggested by 
modern unbelief as to the true nature of Jesus 
Christ; and also because I would help, if I may , 
those who would equip themselves as defenders of 
the faith to appreciate the specific nature of the 
assaults made by the unbelief of to-day, and to place 
their defense upon impregnable ground. 

Especially would I endeavor, on behalf of both 
these classes of readers, to disentangle apologetics 
from the irrelevant issues in which it is too often 
lost, and to emphasize the supreme importance of 
concentrating our defense upon the citadel of the 
faith — the person of Christ. It is hardly necessary 
to add that this little book makes no pretense to 
present a complete view of the evidences of Chris- 
tianity, or to be a defense of the whole circle of its 
fundamental truths, but only to give in small com- 
pass and in popular language sufficient reasons to 
any candid inquirer for accepting Jesus of Nazareth 



iv PREFACE. 

as the Son of God and the Saviour of the world. 
Equally unnecessary is it to disclaim originality for 
arguments familiar to students of the best modern 
writers on apologetics. If I have succeeded in stat- 
ing those arguments tersely and clearly, and so 
given a burning-glass to focalize the rays of truth 
upon the great problem of the personality of Christ, 
my aim has been reached. 

May He who fed a great multitude from the 
scanty store of one little lad accept at my hands 
this lowly offering and use it for the good of some 
of my fellowmen. 

R. H. McK. 
Washington, 
Septuagesima Sunday, 1893. 



TABLE OF CONTENTS. 



Chap. Page. 

I. The Citadel and its Defence, 1 

II. The Theistic Foundation, 21 

III. The Unique Personality of Christ, . . . .49 

IV. The Plan and the Teaching of Christ, ... 69 
V. The Work of Christ Among Men and in Man, . 87 

VI. Miracles and the Modern View of the World, . 107 

VII. Modern Theories of the Resurrection of Jesus, . 125 



THE CITADEL AND ITS DEFENSE. 



"It is very important ... to notice how thoroughly the 
method of attack is changed from that of the deistic contro- 
versy of the last century. Then it was the glorification of 
Nature, in order to depreciate the arguments for the need of a 
Revelation, with which Christianity was assailed. Now we 
find ourselves depreciating Nature, and finding in her alleged 
imperfections and apparent cruelties an argument against 
the benevolence or against the omnipotence of God." — Rev, 
Henry Footman, M.A. 

" Nous pouvons negliger pour le moment cette contrariete 
d'opinions, pour nous en tenir au point de vue essentiel d'oii 
elle procede. II y a une question capitale quidomine ces de- 
bats. Jesus-Christ, est-il le Fils de Dieu, coeternel avec le 
Pere ? PEvangile, est-il une revelation miraculeuse ? le chris- 
tianisme, vient-il de Dieu on des hommes? . . . En conside- 
rant le christianisme comme un fait historique, Ton doit se 
demander s' il differe dans son essence des autres religions, si 
sa doctrine, si son etablissement, si son extension ne peuvent 
s'expliquer que par une intervention miraculeuse de la divin- 
ite. La question est capitale." — F. Laurent, jfitudes sur This- 
toire de Vhumanite. 



THE CITADEL AND ITS DEFENSE. 
" Can ye not discern the signs of the times? " — Matt. xvi. 3. 

In approaching the consideration of the evidences 
of Christianity, it is important to recognize the fact 
that our study must be conducted in the light of the 
conditions of the times in which we live. Our Lord 
rebuked the Pharisees because they did not " discern 
the signs of the times" We, as defenders of the f aith, 
or even as ourselves inquirers concerning the faith, 
will commit a capital error if we fail to adopt in the 
one case our defense, in the other case our inves- 
tigation, to the peculiar conditions of thought and 
belief which characterize our age. We too must 
seek to " discern the signs of the times." We must 
know our own age before we can commend to its 
intelligence the faith once delivered to the saints. 
Our arguments must be addressed to the thought of 
the nineteenth century, not to that of the eighteenth 
or of the sixteenth. 

In other words, the science of apologetics must 
adapt itself to the changes which occur in the attitude 
of men's minds towards the great questions that un- 



4 CHRIST AND MODERN UNBELIEF. 

derlie the Christian position. Arguments and courses 
of reasoning which are valid and sufficient in one 
age or in one generation are not necessarily so in 
another. The postulates which the Christian apolo- 
gist may assume, and upon which he may build his 
argument, in the one case, may no longer be recog- 
nized in the other, and so his whole edifice of reason- 
ing may rest on a doubtful foundation. Unless 
your premises are admitted by those to whom you 
address yourself, you will argue in vain. 

Moreover, if the assailants of the Christian posi- 
tion change their line of attack, as they have done, 
a different line of defense is thereby rendered neces- 
sary. 

1. Let me illustrate my meaning by a concrete 
example. 

In the eighteenth century the deists led the attack 
upon the Christian position. They were met by 
Bishop Butler and Archdeacon Paley, whose immor- 
tal works, "The Analogy" and "The Evidences," 
constituted a complete defense. Under these lead- 
ers the champions of the faith met the deists on 
their own ground and with their own weapons, and 
the issue was a complete rout for the assailants of 
Christianity. 

Butler dealt with the philosophical questions in- 
volved. The deist acknowledged the existence of 
God and that he was the Author of the system of 



THE CITADEL AND ITS DEFENSE. 5 

Nature. Taking advantage of this admission, the 
author of " The Analogy " argued that the same ob- 
jections which the deist raised against the system of 
Christianity held with equal force against the system 
of Nature. But since it was conceded that in the 
latter case they did not overthrow belief in the divine 
origin of the world, it could not be pretended that 
they were valid objections against revelation. He 
proceeded to show an analogy between the chief 
doctrines of the Christian revelation and the order 
of Nature, and argued hence the probability of the 
two systems having proceeded from the same author. 
Paley, setting out with the same assumption of the 
being of God, and his goodness, presented the posi- 
tive proof of the Christian religion, undertaking to 
establish by historical evidence that the chief miracles 
alleged in the Gospels actually occurred. The argu- 
ment from miracles is his chief argument. All others, 
including the character of Christ and the moral pow- 
er of Christianity through the ages, he classes as only 
" auxiliary evidences." (A glance at his table of con- 
tents is sufficient to show this.) 

Now as to the force and the effect of the blows 
delivered by these two protagonists of the Christian 
host in the last century, I entirely concur in the 
judgment recently pronounced by an able writer: 
" Here is a definite system of evidence, admirably 
adapted for its purpose. There can be no question 



6 CHRIST AND MODERN UNBELIEF. 

that it was successful. The deistical assaults upon 
revealed religion were driven back by the deists' 
own methods. Reason was met by reason. The 
fight was upon ground of the unbeliever's own choice, 
and his defeat was utter. All was done with con- 
summate skill. The candid seeker after truth clearly 
perceives the balance turning to the Christian side. 
The world has never seen finer reasoning of its kind, 
more convincing, better sustained, characterized by 
more of the clearness and simplicity of superior truth 
than that of Butler and Paley." * 

Nevertheless the arguments of these great reason- 
ers are not adequate to make good the Christian 
position to-day. Why ? For the simple reason that 
the whole situation is changed. The enemies of 
Christianity are ranged under a different banner. 
The attack is from a different quarter. The weap- 
ons used are different. 

Deism, after flourishing during the first half of 
the eighteenth century, rapidly declined in influence, 
and by the beginning of the nineteenth was in its 
dotage. It was succeeded by pantheism in its sev- 
eral phases — a most dangerous and subtle adversary 
of the faith, because it pays an outward deference 
to the religion of Jesus, doing obeisance to it as the 
crown and consummation of religious development. 

* L. F. Stearns, " The Evidence of Christian Experience," 
p. 8, Ely Lectures for 1890. 



THE CITADEL AND ITS DEFENSE. 7 

Then came the scientific assault culminating in the 
doctrine of evolution in its nontheistic form. Close 
upon the heels of the scientific movement came the 
agnostic philosophy of which Herbert Spencer is the 
most distinguished representative. 

You see, then, how completely the situation is 
changed since the days of Butler and Paley. They 
were confronted by deism, which confessed that God 
was the Author and Ruler of the universe. We face 
pantheism and agnosticism, which deny a personal 
God, or declare that he is unknowable. They were 
able to assume as the basis of their argument the 
being, the power, the wisdom, the goodness of God. 
We, on the contrary, are obliged to make good those 
great truths of theism. 

Paley was able to hang the weight of the Chris- 
tian argument upon the miracles, and these again 
upon the authenticity of the books of the New Testa- 
ment. We, on the contrary, can use the miracles 
only as a subsidiary evidence. While he proved the 
divine mission of Christ by the miracles, we reverse 
the process of argument and prove the miracles by 
his divine character. He was able to assert that the 
Christian religion was the only religion which any 
intelligent person would attach any value to. We, 
on the contrary, find some of the ethnic religions 
occupying a place of great consideration among 
large numbers of intelligent and educated persons. 



8 CHRIST AND MODERN UNBELIEF. 

Plainly, then, the arguments which were valid and 
sufficient to establish the Christian position in the 
last century are not adequate to the exigencies of 
the case in this the last decade of the nineteenth 
century. And if we, as the appointed teachers and 
defenders of the faith, go forth to meet its assailants 
armed only with the arguments of the great apolo- 
gists just alluded to, we shall be guilty of a logical 
anachronism. As well arm our soldiers to-day in the 
armor worn in the time of the Crusades ! As well seek 
to protect the cities of our seacoast against the terrific 
force of modern artillery by the stone walls which eas- 
ily resisted the cannon of a hundred years ago ! 

What then ? Must we no longer study Paley and 
Leslie and Watson? Must we lay aside the im- 
mortal " Analogy " ? On the contrary, that greatest 
work of the greatest Bishop of Durham is, I believe, 
indeed immortal, and will continue to exert a quick- 
ening power upon the thought of the world for gen- 
erations to come. Read it, mark it, learn it, and 
inwardly digest it. Go back to it, and re-read it as 
often as you can. But do not suppose that it meets 
all the issues of to-day, for that it certainly does not, 
and in the nature of the case could not do. Paley 
also and his coadjutors should not be neglected. No, 
my counsel rather is that you read the work of some 
representative deist like Tindal, or Bolingbroke, or 
Shaftesbury, or, in default of this, the Rev. John 



THE CITADEL AND ITS DEFENSE. 9 

Hunt's review of the deistic literature in the eleventh 
chapter of his work on religious thought in England ; 
and then read Paley or Leland or Leslie in reply. 
Having done this, you will then be prepared to study 
the antichristian and antitheistic literature of our 
own day. Do this, if possible, at first hand. Eead 
Renan and Strauss and Huxley and Herbert Spencer 
and Cotter Morrison and other representative think- 
ers of the camp of unbelief ; and so seek as your 
first aim to understand the character of the assault 
directed by these able men against the faith. This 
done, you will be prepared to appreciate the defense 
of the faith which is successfully made by such 
writers as Bushnell, Row, Maccoll, McCosh, Godet, 
Pressense, Christlieb, Uhlhorn, and others. 

2. But I pass to another point, also of great im- 
portance to the successful study of the evidences of 
Christianity. If the logician must ask himself dis- 
tinctly, What is it I propose to prove ? if the archi- 
tect must clearly see what is the character of the 
building he undertakes to erect ; if the military en- 
gineer must decide what place or region of country 
he will fortify against the invading army — equally 
necessary is it for the Christian apologist to place 
distinctly before his mind what it is he proposes to 
defend, and for the student of the evidences to have 
a definite conception of the thing whose evidence he 
is seeking to master. 



10 CHRIST AXD MODERN UNBELIEF. 

What is it, then, whose evidence we propose to 
investigate? Christianity. Not a system of theol- 
ogy, observe, but Christianity. The difference is 
fundamental and vital Christianity, if true, is a 
divine revelation. Theology is a human system de- 
duced by men from the divine revelation. Theology 
is a science, and, like all other sciences, is progress- 
ive. Christianity is a definite deposit of revealed 
facts and truths once for all delivered, and it is the 
same to-day that it was nineteen centimes ago. 

Our inquiry pertains to the evidence of that reve- 
lation, not of the doctrinal systems deduced from it 
by ecclesiastical councils or individual doctors. We 
want to convince others, or we want to assure our- 
selves, as the case may be, that Jesus Christ did 
indeed come in the flesh, that he did indeed reveal 
God's will, that he was indeed the Saviour of the 
world. 

Further, there are two significations of the term 
Christianity : the more complex and the more sim- 
ple. In the former it is a complete series of facts 
and a complete system of divine truth — like some 
vast cathedral, complex in plan, harmonious in de- 
tails, magnificent in proportions. In the latter sense 
Christianity consists of those essential facts and 
those fundamental truths which are necessary to a 
Christian faith and a Christian life. If these be so 
few and so simple that they do but conduct us to 



THE CITADEL AND ITS DEFENSE. H 

the porch of the great cathedral, still they are suffi- 
cient for the great practical ends in view. 

Now, I take it, it is Christianity in this simpler, 
more elementary form whose evidences we are seek- 
ing to grasp. We want to make Christians our fel- 
low-men, not theologians. We want to bring them 
to the great conviction uttered by the eunuch of 
Ethiopia. You remember the story : He and Philip 
sat together in the chariot ; they came to a certain 
water ; the eunuch said, " See, here is water ; what 
doth hinder me to be baptized ? " Philip answered, 
" If thou believest with all thine heart, thou mayest." 
The eunuch answered, " I believe that Jesus Christ 
is the Son of God." If we can so marshal the 
evidences of Christianity as to bring men to that 
great confession of the central truth and the cen- 
tral revelation of the gospel, we will have accom- 
plished the chief aim of our endeavors. For what 
is our first duty ? What is our supreme mission as 
the ministers and stewards of the mysteries of God ? 
Is it not to fulfill the commission given on Olivet ? 
" Go ye therefore, make disciples of all nations, bap- 
tizing them in the name of the Father, and of the 
Son, and of the Holy Ghost." And for discipleship 
in the Church of Christ, be it remembered, it is 
enough that a man believe the elements of the Chris- 
tian religion, the articles of the Apostles' Creed. 

Now, taking a broad view of the contents and 



12 CHRIST AND MODERN UNBELIEF. 

significance of this apostolic faith, we may say that 
it is summed up in two propositions : (1) Christianity 
is a redemptive revelation. (2) It is also a living 
power in the world to-day. This, then, is the aim 
of our apologetics, to convince men that " God was 
in Christ, reconciling the world unto himself," and 
that his gospel is to-day the living power of God 
unto salvation. That is to say, we wish to establish 
the truth of Christianity considered both as a record 
of revealed facts and as a present power of moral 
and spiritual salvation to men. 

3. If the position now taken is correct, then it 
follows that there is a multitude of questions per- 
taining to the Christian religion which, though inter- 
esting and important, do not concern the Christian 
apologist, because they are not vital to the Christian 
position. 

Take, for instance, the great question of the in- 
spiration of the Bible. Of course we cannot assume 
it in our argument for Christianity. To prove Chris- 
tianity by the inspiration or authority of the Bible 
would be to beg the question at issue. This is ob- 
vious, though it is not always observed. 

But now I desire to point out that the truth of 
Christianity is independent of the inspiration of the 
Bible. Even though the Bible were not inspired, 
Christianity might yet be true. Even if we could 
not recognize in the writings of the New Testament 



THE CITADEL AND ITS DEFENSE. 13 

the result of the influence of the Holy Ghost upon 
the men who wrote it, it might still be possible 
to accept Jesus Christ as the Son of God and the 
Saviour of the world. It is therefore no essential 
part of the duty of the Christian apologist to estab- 
lish the inspiration of the Bible, or any part of it. 
Do not misunderstand me. I believe the Bible is 
inspired, and I believe its inspiration can be estab- 
lished to the complete satisfaction of the Christian 
mind — though some of the commonly accepted the- 
ories of inspiration cannot be established. But we 
can prove the divine origin of Christianity, the divine 
mission of Christ, and his claim to be the Lord and 
Saviour, without ever raising the question of inspira- 
tion. It is possible, therefore, to believe in Christ 
and to be a sincere Christian without believing in 
the inspiration of the Scriptures. I do not say it is 
reasonable; I only say it is possible. This was recog- 
nized two hundred and fifty years ago (1615-1691) 
by that devout and able nonconformist Richard Bax- 
ter, who has not without reason been called "the 
father of English apologetics." He wrote as follows : 
"We doubt not but to prove that Scripture is God's 
full and infallible law ; yet if it were so that this 
could not be proved, this would not overthrow the 
Christian religion. If the Scriptures were but the 
writings of honest men, that were subject to mistakes 
and contradictions in the manner and circumstances, 



14 CHRIST AND MODERN UNBELIEF, 

yet they might afford us a full certainty of the sub- 
stance of Christianity. . . . Tacitus, Suetonius, Livy, 
etc., were all heathens, and very f allible ; and yet 
their history affords us a certainty of the great sub- 
stantial passages of the Eoman affairs which they 
treat of . . . . Now if Scripture were but such com- 
mon writings as these, especially joined with the un- 
controlled tradition that hath since conveyed it to 
us, may it not yet give us a full certainty that Christ 
was in the flesh, and that he preached this doctrine 
for the substance, and wrought these miracles to con- 
firm it, and enabled his followers to work the like, 
which will afford us an invincible argument for our 
Christianity?"* 

Let me give an illustration of this position. It is 
now almost universally admitted by scholars, how- 
ever unfriendly to Christianity, and may conse- 
quently be considered an established and settled fact 
in the domain of criticism, that the first four Epis- 
tles of St. Paul — Romans, First and Second Corin- 
thians, and Galatians — are genuine writings of Saul 
of Tarsus, and were written within, say, twenty-five 
years of the date of the death of Christ. 

Now if we had no other line or word of the New 
Testament but only these four letters, we would have 
a foundation broad enough and deep enough to sup- 
port our faith in the superhuman character and mis- 

* See "Homiletic Cyclopedia," p. 88. 



THE CITADEL AND ITS DEFENSE. 15 

sion of Jesus Christ. Every fundamental fact and 
truth of Christianity is found here, and the ad- 
mitted honesty and capacity of the writer make 
him a witness whose testimony is of the very high- 
est value. It is not too much to say, then, that we 
have in these four undisputed Pauline letters a suffi- 
cient historical basis for our faith, without the aid of 
the rest of the Bible, New or Old Testament, and 
without claiming inspiration for Paul or for his 
writings. 

The recognition of the fact that the truth of the 
Christian religion is not bound up with belief in the 
infallibility or even the inspiration of the Bible is 
of the utmost importance. It clears the ground of 
discussion of many irrelevant issues. It is then 
seen that however the questions between the Bible 
and science are determined, they do not necessarily 
involve the integrity of the Christian religion. Sup- 
pose you make out to your entire satisfaction that 
Genesis and geology are irreconcilably opposed 
(which I, for one, do not believe), this conclusion 
does not shake the evidence by which we are con- 
vinced that Jesus of Nazareth was a superhuman 
person, and that his mission was divine. Equally 
clear is it that most of the questions debated so ear- 
nestly in our day on the field of criticism leave the 
argument for the essential truth of Christianity un- 
touched. Whether or not Moses was the author of 



16 CHRIST AND MODERN UNBELIEF. 

the Pentateuch. ; whether or not the Book of Isaiah 
consists of two portions, one by a pre-exilian, the 
other by a post-exilian, writer ; whether or not the 
prophet Daniel was the author of the book which 
bears his name 5 whether or not St. John was the 
author of the Gospel which bears Ms name ; whether 
the four Gospels are or are not free from any im- 
portant discrepancies — nevertheless the divine ori- 
gin of the Christian religion may remain firmly es- 
tablished. Its truth or falsity is not bound up with 
any of these or similar questions. Unhappily they 
have been discussed as well by Christians as by un- 
believers, as if the very citadel of the Christian faith 
must stand or fall with the issue here involved. And 
so the faith of multitudes has been shaken, and the 
peace and comfort of thousands have been disturbed, 
by this confounding of issues which are really dis- 
tinct* 

4. I am firmly convinced, then, that the champions 
of the Christian faith ought to concentrate their 

* "Even if the apostles and evangelists had no special 
inspiration, yet, if we admit their care and fidelity, we may 
trust to their testimony, and so accept their teaching as true. 
So, then, even if we were driven to take the lowest view of 
inspiration, we are not bound to give up our faith. External 
evidence must almost of necessity begin by taking low 
ground. It must treat nothing as certain until it is proved. 
. . . We need not throw away all faith if we should be led to 
think that some books of the Old Testament are only historical 
records collected by Jewish antiquarians, and bound up with 



THE CITADEL AND ITS DEFENSE. 17 

defense upon the one supreme issue, Was Jesus of 
Nazareth a superhuman man ? Was he the mani- 
festation of God to men in the sphere of time ? Was 
he God manifest in the flesh? And was God in 
Christ reconciling the world unto himself? We 
should refuse to be drawn away from this central 
position in our defense of the Christian faith. We 
should set all minor issues on one side until this 
chiefest and greatest issue is determined. 

I do not mean that we should not study those 
other questions to which I have alluded, or that we 
should not discuss them with those individuals who 
have first been satisfied upon the capital point of 
the nature of the person of our Lord Jesus Christ. 
But I urge that this last question overshadows in 
importance all other questions, and that it ought to 
occupy the first place in the order of discussion. 

Now, whether you agree or not in the position 
just taken that the integrity of the faith, in its essen- 
tial elements at least, is independent of the result of 

the writings of prophets. . . . All this might be, and yet God 
may have spoken by holy men of old, and afterward more 
fully by his Son. Some Christian controversialists, who take 
high ground themselves, write as if they thought that Chris- 
tianity was not worth defending unless it was defended ex- 
actly on their principles. The minds of the young men espe- 
cially are sometimes greatly endangered by this means. . . . 
Now we may surely begin by saying that the question of in- 
spiration is, within certain limits, a question internal to Chris- 
tianity." — Bishop Harold Browne, "Aids to Faith." 



18 CHRIST AND MODERN UNBELIEF. 

all questions of biblical criticism, or of agreement 
with science, or of inspiration itself, I urge, in any 
case, the great importance of observing the order of 
argument here insisted on. 

There can be no dispute or difference of opinion 
among thoughtful students who " discern the signs of 
the times " in which we live, that the first question to 
be settled between believers and unbelievers, the first, 
also, to be determined by any man who is in doubt 
of the truth of the Christian religion, has reference 
to the person of Christ. The champions of the two 
opposing camps are agreed as to this. Thus Strauss 
has said : " The debate as to the truth of Christian- 
ity has at last narrowed itself into one as to the per- 
sonality of its founder." And the great Christian 
theologian and historian, Dorner, has said: "The 
energies of all parties engaged in this conflict are 
gathered ever more and more around the person of 
Christ, as the central point at which the matter must 
be determined." 

Our aim as Christian teachers is not controversial 
success, or victory in argument, but to lead men to 
Christ, to bring them to perceive in him the Son of 
God and the Saviour of the world. If we can accom- 
plish this we shall have won our greatest triumph 
and gained our highest reward. 

And our aim as inquirers concerning the Christian 
religion ought to be the same — to gain a saving 



THE CITADEL AND ITS DEFENSE. 19 

knowledge of Christ, the author and finisher of our 
faith. 

If, then, men come to us with objections directed 
against the authenticity of the books of the Bible, 
or against the scientific or historical accuracy of 
the Old Testament, or against the harmony of the 
Gospels, or against any particular doctrine of the 
Christian theology, we stop them at once with the 
question, " What think ye of Christ ? " Have you 
investigated that and come to any definite and final 
conclusion on the subject ? If you have, and if your 
conclusion is that he was not the Son of God and 
the Saviour of the world, then it is quite useless to 
discuss any subordinate question, such as the ac- 
curacy of Moses, or the authenticity of St. John's 
Gospel, or the doctrine of Eschatology. If, on the 
other hand, you have not yet arrived at any conclu- 
sion in regard to the great issue presented by the 
personality of Jesus of Nazareth, then obviously 
that is the question to be considered and discussed 
between us. 



II. 

THE THEISTIC FOUNDATION. 



21 



u Tldvreg yap avOpunoL nep), Qefiv exovaiv vnoTiTjipiv." — ARIS- 
TOTLE. 

" If the student begins with asking, Why am I a Christian ? 
he is forced back on the question, Why am I a theist? For 
Christianity presupposes the existence of God, and declares 
that he has revealed himself in redemptive action. ... And 
when he asks, Why am I a theist? he is forced back on ques- 
tions which reach to the prof oundest depths of human thought. 
. . . Every theory of knowledge which is the intellectual 
basis of atheism involves in its essence complete agnosticism 
or universal skepticism. ... If man cannot know God he 
cannot know anything. Conversely, the existence of God is 
essential to the possibility of rational knowledge. . . . The 
reality of scientific knowledge depends ultimately on the real- 
ity of the existence of God as the Absolute Eeason energizing 
in the universe, and the primary ground of all that is. . . . 
Ultimately the question with the atheist is not whether man 
can know God, but whether he can know anything rationally 
and scientifically." — Samuel Harris, D.D., LL.D. 

"This universe . . . could have been constructed, was 
constructed, only in reason, for reason, and by reason ; and 
therefore everywhere, from the smallest particle to the largest 
system, molded and modeled and inhabited by Design." — 
Professor Stirling. 



22 



II. 

THE THEISTIC FOUNDATION. 

" God hath not left himself without witness." — Acts xiv. 17. 

The Christian apologist cannot (as I pointed out 
in my preliminary lecture) assume the existence of a 
personal God as the basis of his argument. That, 
to many in our day, is the fundamental difficulty of 
belief — the crucial question of apologetics. Is there 
indeed a Being of infinite intelligence and power 
and benevolence and holiness, who made the world 
and all that it contains, and to whom man is ac- 
countable ? Much of the thought of our time chal- 
lenges this belief, or else denies that we have any 
convincing proof of the existence of such a Being, 
any firm basis for such a faith ; so that, though it 
may not be confidently affirmed that there is no 
personal Q-od, yet neither may we with good reason 
affirm that there is. 

I shall therefore, before proceeding with the main 
subject of these lectures, endeavor to give an outline 
— my limits will permit no more — of the argument 
for Christian theism. 

Let it be premised that upon a subject of this 
23 



24 CHRIST AND MODERN UNBELIEF. 

nature demonstrative evidence such as the mathe- 
matician demands, or such as the physicist seeks in 
his experiments, is not to be expected. We might 
as well ask a mathematical demonstration of the 
duty of speaking the truth, or of loving father and 
mother, or of helping the needy. Equally inappli- 
cable are the scientific tests which are applied in 
verifying theories that pertain to material things. 
No, the only evidence which may legitimately be 
demanded in this case is that which is termed mor- 
al, circumstantial, probable. But evidence of this 
kind may be as satisfactory and convincing in its 
sphere as demonstrative evidence in the sphere of 
mathematics or of physical science. 

Let it be also observed that we are chiefly, if not 
exclusively, concerned to exhibit the argument for 
belief in a personal God, and not for mere theism, 
and that for two reasons : first, because our chief 
antagonists in this age are not absolute atheists, but 
rather pantheists and agnostics ; and secondly, be- 
cause a mere philosophical theism which denies or 
cannot recognize the personal attributes of the Deity 
is removed by an almost infinite distance from the 
God of Christianity, who is, as Niebuhr said, " heart 
to heart." 

The chief arguments from which the existence of 
a personal God may be confidently inferred are 
these five ; 



TEE THEIST1C FOUSDATIOX. 25 

1st. The argument from the general consent of 
mankind in that belief. 

2d. The argument from effect to cause. 

3d. The argument from design. 

4th. The argument from the moral nature of man. 

5th. The argument from the manifestation of a 
personal God in Jesus of Nazareth : in his charac- 
ter, in his teaching, in his influence upon mankind. 

In all these directions " God hath not left himself 
without witness" In each of them the witness is 
clear ; and the cumulative weight of the five argu- 
ments combined ought to be irresistible to every 
candid and open mind. 

1. With regard to the first a few words must 
suffice. It is undoubtedly true that religion in 
some form is practically universal among mankind, 
and has been, so far as we can ascertain, from the 
beginning. Without challenging the alleged in- 
stances (and they are very doubtful indeed) of the 
discovery of tribes of men among whom no concep- 
tion of Deity has been found, we may certainly 
affirm that belief in a Deity, or deities, has been, 
and is, so nearly universal among the families of 
the earth as to justify the inference that there is 
something in the constitution of human nature 
which suggests the idea to man, or else that it is 
one of the primitive beliefs (however originally ob- 
tained) which has been handed down from father to 



26 CHRIST AND MODERN UNBELIEF. 

son from the beginning of the race until now. Gro- 
tesque and degraded as are the forms in which this 
belief often appears, it is possible to trace features 
in them all which point to an original universal be- 
lief in a personal God of power and goodness. Poly- 
theistic and other degraded ideas of the Deity are 
evidently departures from the original. These are 
not universal. The common features in which the 
manifold forms of religion coincide testify to an 
original universal belief such as just alleged. 

Now the common consent of mankind in a belief 
in the Deity goes far to establish a presumption in 
its favor, and this presumption is transformed into 
a strong probability when we consider the existence 
in men in general of an intuitive or quasi-intuitive 
belief in the existence of God. A distinguished 
scientist of our generation,* an earnest Christian 
and an ardent evolutionist, affirms that "theism 
neither requires nor admits of proof " ; it is u uni- 
versal, necessary, intuitive." For ourselves, we do 
not rigorously insist on the belief in God as intui- 
tive, but it certainly appears that in the generality 
of men there is a God-consciousness just as there is 
a self -consciousness. It is true that some men seem 
to lack this God-consciousness, just as there are 
cases of color-blindness, or even of partial insensi- 
bility to moral distinctions. But in such instances 

* Professor Le Conte. 



THE THEISTIC FOUNDATION. 27 

we may well demand whether the faculty has not 
been atrophied by neglect ; whether the eyes of the 
soul that once did perceive God have not been put 
out; whether this inability to recognize the exist- 
ence of God is permanent or only temporary; 
whether the God-consciousness be not dormant 
rather than dead or non-existent.* 

Man is a religious animal. Worship would seem 
almost a necessity of his being. If he drive it out 
at the front door, it will return at the back door or 
through the window. Auguste Comte founded his 
elaborate philosophical system on a denial of God 
and of religion. He affirmed that human knowl- 
edge is confined to phenomena; of causes we can 
know nothing. Hence of a First Cause we can make 
no affirmation; it is not a subject of our knowl- 
edge; we know nothing of its existence. But so 
imperious is the demand of the human heart or the 
human reason, or both, for religion, that this proud 
philosopher, after overthrowing, as he claimed, the 

* " For, after all, such a helper of men outside humanity 
the Truth will not allow us to see. The dim and shadowy 
outlines of the superhuman Deity fade slowly away from be- 
fore us, and as the mist of his presence floats aside we per- 
ceive with greater and greater clearness the shape of a yet 
grander and nobler figure, of him who made all gods and shall 
unmake them. From the dim dawn of history and from the 
inmost depths of every soul the face of our Father man looks 
out upon us with the fire of eternal youth in his eyes, and 
says: ' Before Jehovah was, I am.'" — Professor Clifford. 



28 CHRIST AND MODERN UNBELIEF. 

foundations of man's faith in God, is himself com- 
pelled to propound a religion which he calls the 
religion of humanity, and to institute a church 
with an elaborate ritual and an order of priests 
upon whom are conferred powers as exclusive as 
those claimed by the priesthood of the Church of 
Eome. Comte overturns the worship of God only 
to substitute the worship of the human race ! 

Buddhism furnishes another example of the same 
principle ; for although in its primitive form it was 
an atheistic philosophy and not a religion, yet it has 
almost universally clothed itself with the forms of 
religion, with its ritual, its temples, its priesthood, 
its idols. 

Thus, taking a broad survey of the history of the 
religious ideas of mankind, it may be affirmed that 
there has been a general consent in the belief in a 
God of power and goodness, and that through this 
very significant fact " God hath not left himself with- 
out witness." * 

* "It is the peculiar characteristic of first principles that 
they are the most difficult of all others to prove, or even to 
defend in argument, but that they commend themselves in- 
stinctively to common sense or to the general apprehension 
of sound minds. . . . Their real strength lies in their being 
the true interpretation of a natural instinct. ... In propor- 
tion as the conscience is quickened it is natural for men to 
believe in a personal God who judges them. . . . Modern 
philosophy has committed something like an act of suicide in 
respect to this question of the existence of God. For it con- 



THE THEISTIC FOUNDATION. 29 

2, I pass to the second argument, that which is 
derived from the principle of causation. The human 
mind argues confidently from, effect to cause. It is 
an axiom of thought that every effect must have a 
cause. No law is more universal than this. Its 
validity is at once recognized. It involves an ulti- 
mate principle beyond which the human mind can- 
not go. We can never be more certain of anything 
than we are of this. 

Now the universe is an effect, or rather a compli- 
cated series of effects. It must have had a cause. 
That cause is God. We trace indeed a series of 
causes — a chain of causation. But our minds com- 
pel us to believe that that series must have had a 
first term , that chain must have had a beginning. 
An infinite series of causes without any First Cause is 
inconceivable* It is a postulate of reason that there 
can be nothing without a cause, and at the same 
time reason refuses to rest in the thought of cause 

fesses, or rather asserts, that precisely the same difficulties 
apply to a belief in the substantiality of the soul itself. . . . 
Belief in God has been imbedded from the earliest cent- 
uries in the deepest moral convictions of our race."— Henry 
Wace, M.A. 

* "Geology," says Professor Le Conte, "demands a begin- 
ning for man, a beginning for organic species, for the organic 
kingdom, for the kosmos itself. Thus geology negatives the 
idea of an infinite series of similar contrivances." "Science, 
. . . tracing up phenomena from cause to cause, must reach 
somewhere the more direct agency of a First Cause." — "Re- 
ligion and Science." 



30 CHRIST AND MODERN UNBELIEF. 

lying back of cause in an infinite series of causes 
without at last coming to the causa causans, the 
Cause of causes. The stream must have a source, 
the river must take its rise somewhere. The many- 
branching stream of effects which we call the uni- 
verse must have its source, its fountain-head. That 
fountain, that Cause of causes, is God. He is the 
great First Cause, the uncaused cause. Such, stated 
in briefest terms, is the argument from causation. 
Let me remind you that the principle on which it 
rests is among the axioms of natural science. 

When, fifty years ago, Adams and Leverrier com- 
pleted independently of each other that remarkable 
series of mathematical calculations which led them 
to declare their belief that in a certain definite local- 
ity in infinite space there must exist a hitherto un- 
known planet, what was the foundation upon which 
they rested the splendid superstructure of their rea- 
soning, whereby they were enabled first confidently 
to assert the existence of a new world and then to 
search it out in the hidden depths of the trackless 
ether ? It was this simple principle that every ob- 
served effect must have an adequate cause. There 
was an irregularity in the orbit of Uranus. Some 
hidden force, then, must disturb his motion and de- 
flect his path among the starry fields of the heavens. 
There must be a cause for that observed deflection, 
and the cause must be adequate. Some body must 



THE THEISTIC FOUNDATION. 31 

be exercising an attraction upon HerscheFs planet 
in that particular part of his orbit ; and it must be 
large enough to draw him that far out of his course. 
Neither the French nor the English mathematician 
had seen the new planet ; and yet they felt sure of 
its existence, and in a certain part of the heavens, 
before the astronomers had in obedience to their 
suggestion turned their telescopes upon the fields of 
space in search of it. 

Precisely in the same way the believer in a per- 
sonal God may feel confident that he exists and that 
he is possessed of certain attributes. " No man hath 
seen God at any time ; " we have not the evidence 
of our senses that he exists — we have not demonstra- 
tive evidence — but we have sufficient evidence from 
which we infer his existence as certainly as those 
two mathematicians inferred the existence and the 
locality of the planet Neptune. 

Let me further call your attention to the fact that 
the force of this argument is acknowledged by some 
of the most distinguished representatives of agnos- 
ticism. Hear Mr. Herbert Spencer : " Respecting the 
nature of the universe, we seem committed to certain 
unavoidable conclusions. The objects and actions 
surrounding us, not less than the phenomena of our 
own consciousness, compel us to ask a cause ; in our 
search for a cause we discover no resting-place until 
we arrive at the hypothesis of a First Cause ; and 



32 CHRIST AXD MODERN UNBELIEF. 

we have no alternative but to regard this First Cause 
as Infinite and Absolute." * And again : " It is ab- 
solutely certain that we are in the presence of an 
Infinite Eternal Energy from which all things pro- 
ceed." We may therefore fairly claim that the valid- 
ity of the argument from causation is certified by 
one of the foremost apostles of science, himself one 
of our opponents. 

Wherein, then, is the difference between the con- 
clusions of Mr. Herbert Spencer and ours as Chris- 
tian theists? Obviously that he stops with the 
affirmation of the existence of an Infinite Eternal 
Energy, while we go on to affirm that this Infinite 
and Eternal Energy is or proceeds from an Infinite 
and Eternal Person, in whom there must exist intelli- 
gence, wisdom, and goodness, as well as power. The 
only question to be determined is whether Mr. Spen- 
cer can rightly stop short of the recognition of this 
personal God; whether reason, which has led him 
thus far, does not lead him a step farther, even to 
the conclusion of Christian theism. He demurs to 
that conclusion on the ground that this Infinite and 
Absolute First Cause is " inscrutable," and hence 
there can be no science concerning it. But it has 
been answered with great force that if we can have 
a science of matter, which Mr. Spencer declares to 
be in its ultimate nature as incomprehensible as 

* " First Principles," chap. ii. 



THE THEISTIC FOUNDATION. 33 

space and time, " why should the fact of God being 
c inscrutable 7 preclude the possibility of our having 
some knowledge of him and arranging that knowl- 
edge in scientific order? If we can learn a great 
deal about the material creation without being able 
to comprehend its l ultimate nature/ why may we not 
learn a great deal about the Creator while we con- 
fess that he is past finding out ? " * " If it is l abso- 
lutely certain/ as Mr. Herbert Spencer assures us, 
that behind the veil of visible phenomena there is 
the presence of an Energy which is Infinite, Eternal, 
and from which all things proceed, reason suggests 
at least, if it does not demand, the additional attri- 
butes of intelligence and will ; and intelligence and 
will imply personality." t 

Thus again we see that " God hath not left himself 
without witness/ 7 in that he has implanted in every 
rational mind this great principle of causation, which 
physical science continually builds upon, and which 
the agnostic himself recognizes to such an extent 
that logically he should throw away his agnosticism 
and confess with Christian theism, " I believe in God 
the Father Almighty." On the other hand, we on 
our part should join with the agnostic in acknowl- 
edging that though we can be assured of God's ex- 
istence and of many of his attributes, and above all 

* Maccoll, " Christianity in Relation to Science and Mor- 
als," p. 12. f Idem, p. 14. 



34 CHRIST AND MODERN UNBELIEF. 

of his glorious revelation in Christ, yet there is a 
sense in which he is truly "inscrutable" — that we 
see but "parts of his ways 77 ; that, in the language 
of a great theologian, " our soundest knowledge is to 
know that we know him not as he is, neither can 
know him ; and our safest eloquence concerning him 
is our silence, when we confess without confession 
that his glory is inexplicable, his greatness above 
our capacity. 77 

3. The third great argument for the being of a 
personal God is derived from the observed adapta- 
tion of means to ends in the universe, or, in other 
words, the argument from design. It has long been 
the fashion to sneer at this argument, and to speak 
of the view it presents as the " carpenter 7 s theory of 
the universe. 77 But I am confident that its validity 
remains unshaken — nay, that it has greater force in 
our age than ever before. Let me briefly state it. 
It is not a chaos, but a kosmos, which we see around 
us, and of which we form a part. Things are not 
thrown together haphazard ; they are arranged in a 
marvelous order, the beauty of which and its har- 
monious and delicate adjustments, and its complex 
parts, and its wonderful interconnection, are revealed 
to the men of this generation as they were never re- 
vealed before, because all the magnificent discoveries 
of modern science do but unfold that order in greater 
fullness and in greater glory. 



THE THEISTIC FOUNDATION, 35 

But what does this order imply ? What do these 
adaptations suggest ? What inference are we com- 
pelled to draw respecting the origin, or rather the 
originator, of the universe when we see it arranged 
in so wonderful an order ? 

Can such a complicated system as this, with its 
nicely adjusted parts, with its orderly arrangement, 
have originated in unconscious and unintelligent 
forces ? Is it, or is it not, a necessity of our think- 
ing to hold that orderliness and arrangement and 
adaptation are the result of intelligence ? I hold that 
it is ; and therefore I maintain that reason compels 
us to believe that this universe is the result of intel- 
ligence and that it is full of purpose in all its parts. 
Suppose some great painting were found on a desert 
and uninhabited island equaling the Sistine Madonna 
or the Transfiguration in artistic beauty ; and sup- 
pose no one could give any account of its origin, 
could not trace it to any artist in any age, what 
would be thought of the man who should set up a 
theory that no human hand had painted it, but that 
it was the result of the forces of nature ; that the 
paints were mixed and applied to the canvas by the 
wind and the rain, suppose, or by some other natural 
agent; that these unintelligent forces painted the 
landscape, and grouped the figures, and put color in 
the cheek and fire in the eye, and gave unity to the 
whole ? And yet what painting or sculpture or work 



36 CHRIST AND MODERN UNBELIEF. 

of man's art ever contained so many elements of 
design and arrangement as we recognize in the 
panorama of nature, which some wise men would 
persuade us is not the expression of intelligence and 
purpose ? And why, if we infer an intelligent de- 
signer in the one case, are we not equally to infer it 
in the other? Take another illustration. If you 
find a granite bowlder lying on the surface of the 
earth in a region where no granite formations exist, 
you infer that it was brought there by some extrane- 
ous force. Man may have brought it, or as in some 
of the valleys of Switzerland, it may have been borne 
upon the icy shoulders of a glacier from some dis- 
tant spot. But if you find a number of huge mono- 
liths (as is the case at Stonehenge) arranged in a 
manifest order — in the form, say, of an ellipse — and 
another series tracing a circle intersecting the ellipse, 
you go further and infer that here is evidence of in- 
telligence, and not mere blind force, like the glacier 
or the avalanche. You are sure that the hand and 
the mind of man are traceable here. You begin to 
inquire also the purpose of this arrangement. Man 
does not undertake such immense labor capriciously 
or without an object in view. The antiquarians are 
not yet agreed in their reading of the riddle of Stone- 
henge, but they are agreed that those great stones 
had some purpose. 

But nine miles from Stonehenge stands the splen- 



THE TREISTIC FOUNDATION. 37 

did pile of Salisbury Cathedral. Its delicate spire is 
visible from the former place. What a superb tri- 
umph of consecrated genius ! What a complete em- 
bodiment of the thought of worship ! No question 
here of the purpose of the structure ! 

Now, what would be thought of the man who 
should deny any purpose in such a building and 
maintain that it was the result of the fortuitous com- 
bination of pieces of stone piled together in these 
graceful and majestic proportions, and with that 
harmonious order and nice adaptation of parts, by 
the unintelligent forces of nature ? Would he not 
be deemed a madman ? But would his thought be 
one whit more absurd than is the opinion of those 
who maintain that this magnificent universe is not 
the result of omnipotent power and wisdom and pur- 
pose, but of blind, unreasoning force ? 

But there is more than order and intelligence 
stamped upon the world. We find adaptation of 
means to end. The earth is fitted in a wonderful 
order to support human life. Reason will not allow 
us to entertain the supposition that it is a mere 
chance that the earth bears the fruits and the food 
adapted to the use of man; or that his body is 
adapted to receive and assimilate food by accident ; 
or that fuel produces heat; or that the earth is 
stored with exhaustless supplies of coal also by acci- 
dent. We see the birds fitted to fly, with wings so 



38 CHRIST AND MODERN UNBELIEF. 

wondrously constructed that no human skill has yet 
been able to imitate them ; and we see the fish fitted 
to live in the water 5 and we argue from all this with 
assured certainty that there is a wise Creator by 
whom all these subtle and delicate adjustments have 
been perfected. The force of this argument is felt 
even by speculative unbelievers. John Stuart Mill 
confessed its validity. David Hume, as he walked 
home one beautiful evening with a friend, exclaimed, 
" No one can look up to that sky without feeling 
that it must have been put in order by an intelligent 
Being." In truth the only device by which its force 
can be evaded is to suppose — and, incredible as it 
seems, the hypothesis has actually been put forth — 
that the particles of matter themselves possess in- 
telligence. But in that case, the difficulty would 
only be put a step farther back, for it would be nec- 
essary to ask, Whence came these intelligent parti- 
cles ? And whether is easier — to believe in one God 
of infinite power and intelligence creating and ar- 
ranging the universe, or to believe in multitudinous 
intelligent particles of matter (self-originated, if there 
be no God) fashioning this marvelous and beautiful 
order of the world ? 

I do not forget in what I have said above that it 
is asserted by many that the argument from design 
is ground to powder by the now widely accepted 
theory of evolution. But that assertion cannot be 



THE THEISTIC FOUNDATION. 39 

substantiated, as can be shown in a few words with- 
out entering upon the discussion of so vast a subject 
as the theory in question brings up. Observe, then, 
that many of the most able and thorough-going evo- 
lutionists remain firm theists, even devout Christians. 
For them the argument from design not only loses 
none of its force, but is even enhanced in power and 
beauty by that hypothesis. They feel, with Charles 
Kingsley, that it is only cause for greater wonder if 
indeed God " is not only so wise that he can make 
all things, but so much wiser even than that, that he 
can make all things make themselves." No matter 
how long the process of evolution, they find at last 
behind all infinite intelligence wisdom and good- 
ness. No matter how natural the processes by which 
through "natural selection " the world or man may 
have been developed, they reach finally the super- 
natural cause — the will and purpose and wisdom of 
an infinite Creator • endowing matter with these mar- 
velous capacities ; giving the life-cell, for example, 
the power to grow, to assimilate nourishment, to 
produce other cells like itself ; and presiding over the 
development of life at every step, directing "the 
multitudinous divergencies of the original life-germ 
in the course of its development towards all the in- 
numerable phases of life which we behold." They 
see in the wondrous combination of beauty and utility 
in nature the manifestation of a divine purpose and 



40 CHRIST AND MODERN UNBELIEF, 

a divine arrangement, not a whit the less because 
the process of its development is natural and extends 
through an almost inconceivably long period of time. 

Those who assert that the argument from design 
is overthrown by the doctrine of evolution ought to 
remember that that doctrine does not account for the 
process which it supposes — that it makes no attempt 
to explain the source or genesis of evolution — f or Dar- 
win himself admitted that his theory did not pretend 
to be a solution of the origin of the universe. So 
that it may well be said that " without the hypothesis 
of a presiding mind directing its processes, the doc- 
trine of evolution is a greater mystery than that of 
special creation." * 

On the other hand, theologians should never for- 
get that it is only in its antitheistic form that the 
doctrine of evolution conflicts with our belief in the 
living God. 

On any intelligible theory of the universe, then, it 
appears that " God hath not left himself without wit- 
ness, in that he did good and gave men rain from 
heaven and fruitful seasons " ; for again, in the lan- 
guage of the Apostle, " the invisible things [of God] 
are seen from the creation of the world, being under- 
stood by the things that are made, even his eternal 
power and divinity." 

* Maceoll, " Christianity in Kelation to Science and Mor- 
als," p. 21. 



THE THE I STIC FOUNDATION. 41 

4. The fourth great argument for the being of 
God is derived from the moral nature of man. The 
considerations already adduced prove his existence, 
his power, his wisdom, and they also imply his good- 
ness and his other moral attributes ; for it is not 
only intelligence, but surely also benevolence, that is 
written across the face of nature. 

But when we consider the moral nature of man, 
the argument for the moral attributes of God is 
direct and conclusive. 

Man is a free agent. He has the great preroga- 
tive of choice. He is largely a self-determining 
being. He believes himself free. He feels his 
accountability for his choice. He acknowledges his 
responsibility as a moral being. He holds his fellow- 
man similarly responsible and similarly free. And 
not all the fine webs of sophistry ever woven by 
speculative deniers of this freedom and this responsi- 
bility have changed the general conviction of man- 
kind or altered the laws based upon that conviction 
of responsibility for conduct. Now study this moral 
nature of man, and ask yourself, Whence came it ? 
Who fashioned it? Is it, could it be, the result of 
natural selection, of a purely physical evolution, with 
no personal Being behind that evolution? Is any 
inference more certain than that such a being as 
man must have proceeded from a Being likewise 
free, likewise moral? Men do not gather grapes of 



42 CHRIST AND MODERN UXBELIEF. 

thorns or figs of thistles. The stream cannot rise 
higher than the fountain. The evolution cannot go 
beyond the involution. The Creator of man (and he 
must have had a creator, or, if you prefer it, a cause) 
must have been possessed at least of those moral 
qualities which are found in him. Every moral 
attribute that exists in man must have its higher 
counterpart in God. Whence, for example, came 
the sense of justice in the human breast ? Was it 
inherent in protoplasm ? Is it a quality of matter f 
Or did it come from God — was it implanted by him ? 
And is it in man an image and reflex of a quality in 
God f Here again the great principle of causation 
comes into play. There must be an adequate cause 
for such a result or product as the moral nature of 
man ; and we affirm that a mere impersonal energy, 
or a mere material force destitute of volition or pur- 
pose, is not adequate to produce that nature 5 that 
as certainly as it is true that ex nihilo nihil fit, so 
certain is it that no merely material evolution could 
have produced a free, self-determining, responsible 
being such as man 5 that whatever the cause that 
made him what he is, it must at least have possessed 
those qualities which we recognize in him. In other 
words, only a personal Being possessing freedom 
and will and a moral nature could have been the 
author and maker of man. 

The universe in its primitive condition contained, 



TEE TEE1STIC FOUNDATION. 43 

so the antitheistic evolutionist tells us, nothing what- 
ever but matter, force, and motion. Well, upon that 
hypothesis it is impossible to conceive how conscious- 
ness or freedom or conscience could ever have been 
developed. Yet these all exist and cohere in man, 
and hence the conclusion is unavoidable that the 
hypothesis is insufficient to account for the facts 
and therefore must be abandoned. There must 
have been more in the universe than the material- 
istic hypothesis allows: there must have been a 
personal Being, free, moral, spiritual, to account for 
such a product as the moral nature of man. Mr. 
Herbert Spencer finds that there must have been an 
infinite and absolute cause for the universe : he is 
" absolutely certain that we are in the presence of 
an Infinite Eternal Energy, from which all tilings 
proceed." He reasons as Adams and Leverrier rea- 
soned about the unseen planet that must exist to 
account for certain phenomena. We reason in just 
the same way and with as complete certitude to the 
conclusion that to account for the phenomena which 
we find in man — his personality, his freedom, his 
conscience, his religious nature, his spiritual aspira- 
tions, his innate perception and approval of the true, 
the beautiful, and the good — there must be a Being 
who is free and pure and good, a personal Being 
who is spiritual and moral, in whom that k ' Infinite 
Eternal Energy" of our philosopher abides. 



44 CHRIST AND MODERN UNBELIEF. 

My limits do not permit me to elaborate the argu- 
ment, but enough, I hope, has been said to show 
that here also " God hath not left himself without 
witness " — that he has given in the human con- 
science, in the whole moral nature of man, incon- 
testable and sufficient evidence of his attributes. 

You are no doubt aware that serious objections 
are raised to this argument, as well as to that from 
design, upon the ground that we find imperfection 
and evil as well as good in the world and in man. 
The tragic aspect of things in the realm of nature 
and of human history so impresses some minds that 
the goodness and benevolence which the Christian 
theist reads therein are even overshadowed. The 
pessimist reads Machiavelianism rather than benefi- 
cence in the face of nature. " This world the crea- 
tion of a God ! " exclaims Schopenhauer. " Say rather 
of a devil ! " And Mr. John Stuart Mill declared 
that " if any man were to act as nature is acting 
every day, he would in any civilized community be 
hanged." 

The full statement and refutation of objections of 
this class would carry me far beyond my necessary 
limits, and I must refer you to Canon Row's very 
able treatment of the whole subject. * I can only 
suggest one or two considerations of a very general 
character. The first is that the evil, the imperfec- 

* "Christian Theism," chap. ix. 



THE THEISTIC FOUNDATION. 45 

tion, and the suffering in the world are greatly ex- 
aggerated by writers of the class alluded to. A 
candid consideration will convince us that, taken as 
a whole, the phenomena of sentient life and the facts 
of experience indicate benevolence as well as skill 
in the Creator, and point to a great predominance 
of happiness over misery. Another reflection of 
great importance is that by far the largest part of 
suffering and sorrow and pain that exist in the world 
is the consequence of man's abuse of his freedom, 
and hence for this the Creator is not responsible. 

Again, it must be considered that we know not 
how far the evils that afflict mankind may further 
be the work of Satan and his angels. Of still greater 
importance is it to remember that pain and other 
forms of human suffering are frequently the instru- 
ments of moral regeneration or of spiritual develop- 
ment, so that the noblest and most beautiful traits 
of character are produced by the things men call 
misfortunes and calamities. This ought to teach us 
that we may expect, as the final result of the present 
economy, "larger good because of evil." And final- 
ly, let it be always remembered that we are too nar- 
row in our vision and too feeble in our capacity to 
sit in judgment on so vast an order as this boundless 
universe, or so infinite a scheme as the moral govern- 
ment of God. So much of it is plainly beneficent, 
that it is only the part of reason as well as faith to 



46 CRBIST AXD MODERN VXBEL1EF. 

suppose it would all be seen to be good if we knew 
all the facts and could see their true relations. 

When, in 1877, the planet Mars seemed to return 
upon its track and make for a considerable time a 
retrograde motion, it would have been very unscien- 
tific to conclude in advance of the discovery that 
this retrograde movement was only apparent (being 
due to the peculiar position and relation at that time 
of our earth to the planet), that the laws that govern 
the planetary motions were in this instance set aside 
and the unity and harmony of the kosmos broken* 
It was more scientific to have faith in nature, and 
to suppose there was some yet undiscovered explana- 
tion consistent with the unity and harmony of cos- 
mical law. 

And equally unwise and unreasonable would it be 
to conclude against the goodness or the wisdom of 
the Creator because of the apparent and unexplained 
contradictions to those attributes which we find in 
nature. It is the part of reason as well as faith to 
"trust the larger hope," to rely upon the persistence 
of the forces of benevolence and wisdom, and to 
attribute the apparent inconsistencies to the imper- 
fection of our faculties or the errors of our observa- 
tion. Well may we ask, with the great laureate of 
England, lately taken from the world, 

* See "The Story of the Heavens," by Sir Robert Ball, 
pp. 182, 183. 



THE THEISTIC FOUNDATION. 47 

. . . "And he, shall he, 

" Man, her last work, who seem'd so fair, 
Such splendid purpose in his eyes, 
Who roll'd the psalm to wintry skies, 
Who built him fanes of fruitless prayer, 

" Who trusted God was love indeed 
And love Creation's final law — 
Tho' Nature, red in tooth and claw 
With ravine, shriek' d against his creeds 

"Who loved, who suffer'd countless ills, 
Who battled for the True, the Just, 
Be blown about the desert dust, 
Or seaPd within the iron hills? 

" No more ? A monster then, a dream, 
A discord. Dragons of the prime, 
That tear each other in their slime, 
Were mellow music matched with him." 

5. It remains only to consider the last of our 
arguments for the existence of a personal God, that, 
viz., which is drawn from a consideration of the 
divine attributes which appear in the person and 
teaching and work of Jesus Christ. This constitutes 
a distinct source of proof, and it is perhaps the 
clearest and strongest of all. Jesus of Nazareth is 
a revelation of the divine. His character, his dis- 
courses, his influence on mankind, cannot be cata- 
logued among merely human phenomena. "God 
is manifest in Christ; n so that, apart from all other 
evidences of the being of God, there is in him a dear 
unfolding of the Deity. 



48 CHRIST AND MODERN UNBELIEF. 

To exhibit this will be the chief purpose of the fol- 
lowing lectures, and hence I must refer you to them 
for the completion of my argument for Christian 
theism, only repeating in conclusion that each branch 
of the argument lends force to the other, and their 
cumulative weight ought to be irresistible to any 
candid mind. 



III. 

THE UNIQUE PERSONALITY OF 
CHRIST. 



49 



" Whatever else may be taken away from us by rational 
criticism, Christ is still left, a unique figure, not more unlike 
all his precursors than all his followers." — John Stuart 
Mill. 

" His person and his work are the writings which he in- 
scribed in broad characters on the history of mankind, and 
the work of his Spirit on the heart is the epistle which he is 
day by day inscribing in ineffaceable characters within us. . . . 
Our faith, then, does not depend upon writings and their truth 
and genuineness or ungenuineness, but upon facts which be- 
long to history, and upon effects produced within our hearts." 
— Luthardt. 

"La position que Jesus s'attribuait etait celle d'un Etre 
surhumain, et il voulait qu'on le regardat comme ayant avec 
Dieu un rapport plus eleve que celui des autres hommes." — 
Kenan. 

"MM. Pecaut and Eenan make painful efforts to extract 
from the records of this life some appearance of the stain of 
imperfections. " — Keim. 

" Let us listen to the conclusion to which the study of the 
synoptic Gospels has led so profound a skeptical philosopher 
as the late J. S. Mill. He is of opinion that they contain be- 
yond all doubt an actual delineation of the character and 
teaching of Jesus, and that it is impossible that either the 
one or the other can have been an invention of his followers." 
— C. A. Row, M.A. 

"The energies of all parties engaged in this conflict are 
gathered ever more and more around the Person of Christ as 
the central point at which the matter must be determined." 
— Dorner. 



50 



III. 



THE UNIQUE PERSONALITY OF CHRIST. 

"And Nathanael said unto him, Can there any good thing 
come out of Nazareth? Philip saith unto him, Come and see." 
— John i. 46. 

In my preliminary lecture I urged several con- 
siderations which seem to me indispensable to the 
intelligent and effective study of the evidences of 
Christianity. 

The first was that we should realize, in limine, that 
the assault directed against Christianity in our time 
proceeds from a different quarter and is based upon 
different principles from that which was so deci- 
sively repulsed by the great Christian apologists of 
the eighteenth century, and hence that we must not 
expect to find the arguments of Butler and Paley, 
powerful as they were and valuable as they will be 
for all time, adequate to meet the exigencies of the 
situation in this the last decade of the nineteenth 
century. The Christian army of defense must 
change front to meet the change in the enemy's line 
of attack, and it must erect its fortifications with a 
view to the artillery mid the projectiles which are 
brought to bear against it to-day. 

51 



52 CHRIST AND MODERN UNBELIEF. 

I proceeded next to point out that what we seek 
to defend and establish as Christian apologists is 
not any system of theology or of Church doctrine, 
however important, but rather Christianity in its 
fundamental and essential facts and principles. Our 
task is quite apart from that of the theologian or 
the Church historian. We are set to defend the 
citadel of the faith, and we deem it the part of wis- 
dom to concentrate our strength upon it alone. If 
we can make good the divine mission of Jesus Christ 
as the Saviour of the world, our task will have been 
well performed. 

I then insisted that in accordance with this prin- 
ciple we should disentangle our discussion of many 
of the questions often wrongly identified with the 
evidences of Christianity, and keep it close to the 
one supreme issue involved. In this connection you 
were reminded that even the inspiration of the Bible 
is not essential to the argument for the truth of 
Christianity as a divine revelation and a divine 
power for the salvation of men.* Finally I urged 
the great importance of the order of the Christian 
argument. The first question is, What think ye of 
Christ ? Approach and grapple with that first. Re- 

* Baxter remarks that the old fathers, when they disputed 
with the heathens, did first prove the truth of the Christian 
religion before they came to prove the divine authority of 
the Scriptures. 



THE UNIQUE PERSONALITY OF CHRIST. 53 

fuse to turn aside to discuss the objections of cer- 
tain scientific men, or the questions involved in 
biblical criticism, or the difficulties of any of the 
Christian doctrines. Unless Christ is recognized as 
the Son of God, all other belief s will be vain. If he 
is so recognized, the one thing needful is attained. 
Therefore rigidly adhere to the order of the argu- 
ment. First settle the question as to the person of 
Jesus. Then you can enter upon other and less vital 
questions. Both parties to this great argument are 
agreed that the fundamental question at issue relates 
to the person of Christ. 

Now in meeting this great issue, upon which 
hangs the truth of the Christian religion and the 
validity of the Christian hope, we shall not put the 
miracles in the forefront to bear the chief burden 
of the argument, as has often been done by Chris- 
tian apologists. We shall not argue thus: Christ 
wrought miracles, therefore he was the Son of God. 
But rather we shall urge weighty reasons for believ- 
ing in his superhuman personality independent of 
the truth and reality of the miracles he is alleged 
to have performed. Paley admits "that the ancient 
Christian advocates did not insist upon the miracles 
in argument so frequently as we should have done. 
It was their lot to contend with notions of magical 
agency, against which the mere production of the 
facts was not sufficient for the convincing of their 



54 CHRIST AND MODERX VXBELIEF. 

adversaries; I do not know whether they them- 
selves thought it quite decisive of the controversy." * 
There exist equally valid reasons in our day why we 
should not make the miracles our first or chiefest 
argument for Christianity. Our argument is this : 
the character of Jesus is superhuman ; the teaching 
of Jesus is superhuman ; the work of Jesus in his- 
tory and in the individual soul is superhuman. 
Therefore he was himself superhuman — he was the 
Christ, the Son of God, and as such it was natural 
that he should work miracles. Instead of proving 
Christ by the miracles, we prove the miracles by 
Christ. 

This method of reasoning was foreshadowed long 
ago by a contemporary of Paley, Soame Jenyns, 
w r hose "View of the Internal Evidence of the Chris- 
tian Religion" is one of the most powerful argu- 
ments ever made in defense of the faith.t In the 
introduction the author says : " To prove the truth 
of the Christian religion, I prefer to begin by show- 
ing the internal marks of divinity which are stamped 
upon it, because on this the credibility of the prophe- 
cies and miracles in great measure depends ; for if 
we have once reason to be convinced that this relig- 

* "Evidences," Part III., chap. v. 

t It is stated upon good authority that Patrick Henry, the 
celebrated orator of the American E evolution, who had in 
early life entertained skeptical opinions, was fully satisfied 
of the truth of the Christian religion by that little treatise. 



THE UNIQUE PERSONALITY OF CHRIST. 55 

ion is derived from a supernatural origin, prophe- 
cies and miracles will become so far from being in- 
credible that it will be highly probable that a super- 
natural revelation should be foretold and enforced 
by supernatural means." 

We believe that it is possible to show, from a con- 
sideration of the character, the teaching, and the 
work of Jesus, valid and sufficient reasons for being 
convinced that the Christian religion is derived from 
a superhuman source, without assuming either the 
inspiration of the New Testament record or the 
actual occurrence of the miracles there related. In 
the present lecture I shall present the argument 
from the character of Christ. We affirm that it is so 
unique, so sublime in its moral grandeur, that it evi- 
dently stands on a different plane from any other 
character in history; it is so far exalted above all 
the other characters of history that the only rational 
account to give of it is that it represents a super- 
human Person. " As no proof besides the light is 
necessary to show that the sun shines, so we shall 
find that Jesus proves himself by his own self-evi- 
dence. The simple inspection of his life and char- 
acter will suffice to show that he cannot be classified 
with mankind (man though he be) any more than 
what we call his miracles can be classified with mere 
natural events." # 

* Buslmell, "Nature ancl fche Supernatural," p. 277. 



56 CHRIST AND MODERN UNBELIEF. 

Observe, I am now speaking only of the character 
of Christ as we see it delineated in the Gospels. 
Whatever be the origin of the Gospels, whatever be 
the reality that lies behind them and produced them, 
there is the sublime character they represent. We 
can all see it. It is a palpable fact, as plain and 
certain as the sun in the heavens. We look into the 
mirror and we see our own faces reflected. We 
look into the depths of Mirror Lake in the Yosemite, 
and we see the wondrous picture of the great cliffs 
and peaks of the entire valley, distincter and in- 
finitely more beautiful than any picture from the 
hand of man. Even so we look into these four Gos- 
pels, and we see there the face and form of Jesus, a 
character unique and sublime beyond any other that 
the records of history or the pages of fiction contain. 
That the character here delineated is such as I de- 
scribe, it is hardly necessary to prove, for it is almost 
universally admitted. Some people are color-blind. 
In some rare instances human beings are insensible 
to the beauty of the world. And so there may pos- 
sibly be individuals insensible to the beauty and 
sublimity of the character of Christ. Of such I need 
take no account here. But certain it is that the 
great body even of unbelievers have felt the spell 
and the power of that life and character. Thus 
Ernest Renan says : " Jesus Christ is the highest of 
those columns which show to man his origin and 



THE UNIQUE PERSONALITY OF C HEIST. 57 

his destiny. ... In him is centered all that there 
is in our nature of what is good and what is ele- 
vated." And John Stuart Mill: "Whatever else 
may be taken away from us by rational criticism, 
Christ is still left, a unique figure, not more unlike 
all his precursors than all his followers." * Another 
unbeliever, the author of a brilliant though unschol- 
arly book, " Supernatural Religion," sees in Christ 
one who, " surpassing in his sublime simplicity the 
moral grandeur of Sakya Mouni, and putting to the 
blush . . . the teaching of Socrates and Plato, . . . 
presented the rare spectacle of a life, so far as we 
can estimate it, uniformly noble and consistent with 
his own lofty principles." And Mr. Lecky, whose 
position as an unbeliever is unequivocal, nevertheless 
wrote these remarkable words : "It was reserved for 
Christianity to present to the world an ideal charac- 
ter which through all the changes of eighteen cent- 
uries has inspired the hearts of men with an impas- 
sioned love, and has shown itself capable of acting 
on all ages, nations, temperaments, and conditions ; 
has not only been the highest pattern of virtue, but 
the highest incentive to its practice ; and has exerted 
so deep an influence that it may be truly said that 
the simple record of those short years of active life 
has done more to regenerate and to soften mankind 

* " Essays on Religion," p. 253, 



58 CHBIST AXD UODEBX UNBELIEF. 

than all the disquisitions of philosophers and all the 
exhortations of moralists." * 

Now the problem which here demands solution is, 
How are we to give a rational account of this won- 
derful portraiture which we find in the Gospels f Is 
it at last a true portrait of a real Person ! Or is it 
an ideal picture, wholly "legendary, or at any rate 
largely so ? 

If the latter, if the Jesus of the evangelists is in 
any large degree a legendary character, if the great 
leading traits of the person whose face and form is 
seen in these pages are ideal and not real, are a 
legendary formation and not a true portraiture, 
then we have indeed a strange series of phenomena 
before us. For first, we all know how difficult a 
thing it is to invent a character which shall be 
thoroughly consistent and harmonious with itself. 
Yet here is a character of perfect unity and consist- 
ency, as well as of extraordinary beauty and grand- 
eur, produced by whom? By illiterate Galileans, 
Jews without culture, fishermen and publicans ! Such 
were the evangelists, if the uniform tradition of the 
Church be true. If, however, this tradition be re- 
jected, then this extraordinary literary phenomenon 
must be attributed to we know not whom. Surely 
men possessed of such unparalleled genius as was 

* "History of Morality from Augustus to Charlemagne," 
vol. ii., p. 8. 



THE UNIQUE PERSONALITY OF CHRIST. 59 

requisite to the creation of such a character as that 
of Jesus should have left some impress upon the 
world — some record of themselves and their work ! 
It was an historic age. Why have we no record of 
the writers whose genius surpassed that of all other 
writers of fiction that ever lived ? But this is not 
the only literary marvel here. We have not one 
portrait only, but four, of Jesus of Nazareth. We 
have the Christ of Matthew, the Christ of Mark, the 
Christ of Luke, the Christ of John. Here they are 
— four studies, if you please, of the same face, each 
characterized by distinct individuality in the painter, 
and yet all harmonious. It is four pictures but only 
one Christ. In all the great features, of character 
there is complete harmony. How did this come to 
pass if the character was invented ? Who is credu- 
lous enough to believe, who is irrational enough to 
give credence, even for a moment, to the supposition 
that four illiterate or unknown writers could have 
drawn each a separate picture of an imaginary char- 
acter, and that that character should turn out the 
greatest and the most sublime ever portrayed, and 
that the four studies should be completely harmo- 
nious ? 

Even if the writers had compared notes and stu- 
diously labored to produce harmony in their several 
pictures, it would have been an unexampled achieve- 
ment to have attained such complete success. But 



60 CHRIST AND MODERN UXBELIEF. 

a comparison of these four Gospels shows unmistak- 
able evidence of the independence of the writers. 
This is now generally admitted. Had the writers 
composed their several biographies in concert they 
would never have left such apparent discrepancies 
lying on the surface as we find in the Gospels. But 
it is inconceivable that four men, writing independ- 
ently, should have produced four harmonious ideal 
pictures, unless they were indeed painting from the 
same model. 

Mr. Mill, to whom I have already referred, admits 
the force of these considerations. He says in the 
last of his posthumous essays : " It is no use to say 
that Christ, as exhibited in the Gospels, is not his- 
torical, and that we know not how much of what is 
admirable has been superadded by the tradition of 
his followers. The tradition of his followers suffices 
to have inserted any number of miracles, and may 
have inserted all the miracles he is reputed to have 
wrought. But who among his disciples or among 
their proselytes was capable of inventing the sayings 
ascribed to Jesus, or of imagining the life and char- 
acter revealed in the Gospels? Certainly not the 
fishermen of Galilee, certainly not St. Paul, and 
still less the early Christian writers, in whom nothing 
is more evident than that the good which was in 
them was all derived, as they all professed that it 
was, from a higher source." 



THE UNIQUE PERSONALITY OF CHRIST. 61 

Let me call your attention to another peculiar 
feature of these four portraitures of Jesus. The 
writers do not describe Jesus. They make no com- 
ment on his sayings or his acts. They do not draw 
the likeness of the Man whose memoirs they pre- 
serve. There is no " formal delineation 7 ' of the 
character of Jesus in the Gospels. They do not 
praise him. They do not hold him up as an object 
of adoration or of imitation. They narrate his mira- 
cles without any expression of surprise or of ad- 
miration. They tell the story of his wondrous life 
absolutely without feeling. His marvelous self- 
sacrifice, his divine patience, his deep humility, his 
godlike calmness, his forgiveness of his enemies, his 
majestic silence and dignity under insult, are all re- 
lated without comment, as if by spectators who had 
absolutely no interest in him or in the scenes they 
describe. Even the story of the crucifixion is told 
without any sign of condemnation of his murderers 
or of astonishment at the events described, and with 
no effort after effect. 

And yet their narrative is admitted by friends 
and foes to be the most majestic ever penned, and 
the Man of whom they write the sublimest character 
the world has ever known. Without any art, with- 
out any effort, without any attempt at character- 
painting, they have delineated a character and a life 
which stands before us in unapproachable grandeur. 



62 CHRIST AND MODERN UNBELIEF. 

"Without aiming at pathos or dramatic effect, they 
have set before us scenes which in these very feat- 
ures have never been equaled by any creations of 
the mightiest genius. 

What is the explanation of these strange literary 
phenomena ? There can be but one : these evangel- 
ists are simply putting down the true story of what 
happened. Their work is as unconscious as the work 
of the sun's rays in producing a photograph. The 
narrative is so wonderful because the scenes it de- 
scribes were so unique and unexampled. The char- 
acter their simple story delineates is so sublime and 
of such moral grandeur because the original was so * 

What now were some of the features of the char- 
acter of Jesus ? His childhood was absolutely pure. 
The evangelists tell us very little of his early years, 
but in those few delicate touches there is delineated 
" a holy thing/' a child without guile, without weak- 
ness, without sin. No other great character of his- 
tory is so described. Here is a feature of absolute 
originality. 

I next call attention to his innocence. From be- 
ginning to end of those three short years, the record 
of which, as Mr. Lecky confesses, has done more to 
regenerate mankind than all the disquisitions of 
philosophers and all the precepts of moralists, he 
was without guile, a man of spotless innocence. 

* Compare Row's "Bampton Lectures," pp. 179, 180. 



TEE UNIQUE PERSONALITY OF CHRIST. 63 

"The Lamb of God" is one of the most character- 
istic of his titles. And yet this innocence was con- 
joined with matchless force, unflinching courage, 
unconquerable purpose. He was at once the strong- 
est and the gentlest of men, the most masterful yet 
the most innocent. 

Now " we associate weakness with innocence, and 
the association is so powerful that no human writer 
would undertake to sketch a great character on the 
basis of innocence, or would think it possible." * 

Another remarkable feature of the character of 
Jesus is the absence in him of any consciousness of 
sin. It has been remarked that " human piety be- 
gins with repentance." But there is no sign or ex- 
pression or hint of Jesus having ever repented, or 
even regretted any act or word or thought of his. 
All other good men have felt and confessed their 
shortcomings, their failures, their sins ; and as they 
have become better and holier they have had a deeper 
sense of their sinfulness. But Jesus, though his 
words and acts and very presence are like a pure 
perfume of holiness, never for one moment feels or 
confesses any sense of sin or imperfection. Nay, 
he claims to be sinless. "Which of you eonvinceth 
me of sin?" was his challenge uttered eighteen cent- 
uries ago, and never successfully met Here is a 
feature of character uot only unexampled, bul abso- 

* Bushnell, "Nature and the Supernatural," p. 28 



64 CHRIST AND MODERN UNBELIEF. 

lutely different from the fundamental experience of 
mankind — so different that it forbids us to classify 
Jesus with men, notwithstanding the beauty and 
perfection of his manhood. " Piety without one 
dash of repentance, one ingenuous confession of 
wrong, one tear, one look of contrition, one request 
to Heaven for pardon — let any one of mankind try 
this kind of piety, and see how long it will be ere his 
righteousness will prove itself to be the most impu- 
dent conceits "Now he was either sinless, or he 
was not. If sinless, what greater, more palpable 
exception to the law of human development than 
that a perfect and stainless being has for once lived 
in the flesh ? If not, . . . then we have a man tak- 
ing up a religion without repentance . . . and hold- 
ing it as a figment of insufferable presumption to 
the end of his life, and that in a way of such un- 
faltering grace and beauty as to command the uni- 
versal homage of the human race ! Could there be 
a wider deviation from all we know of mere human 
development ? " * 

Yet another unique feature in the character of 
Jesus was his perfect humility, conjoined with his 
amazing pretensions. Let me recall one or two of 
his utterances : " I am the light of the world ; " "I 
am the resurrection and the life ; " "I and the 
Father are one; " "All men should honor [me] the 

* Idem, p. 286. 



THE UNIQUE PERSONALITY OF CHRIST. 65 

Son, even as they honor the Father ; n " Father, 
glorify thou me with the glory which I had with 
thee before the world was ; n " Before Abraham was, 
I am ; " u All power is given unto me in heaven and 
in earth ; " " Come unto me, all ye that travail and 
are heavy laden, and I will give you rest." 

There has never been any human being, unless he 
were a madman, who at all approached such self- 
assertion, such astonishing pretensions as these. Had 
such claims been heard from Plato, or Aristotle, or 
Socrates, or from any hero or benefactor of the race 
whomsoever, they would have been laughed to scorn. 
Yet Jesus has made them, and retains (even among 
unbelievers) the respect and the admiration of men. 
And though he has made these transcendent claims, 
which would imply unequaled arrogance in any 
other man, yet he retains among men to-day the 
place he has held for eighteen centuries as the meek- 
est, the most modest, the lowliest of men! "His 
worth is seen to be so great, his authority so high, 
his spirit so celestial, that instead of being offended 
by his pretensions we take the impression of one in 
whom it is even a condescension to breathe our air. 
I say not only his friends and followers take this im- 
pression; it is received as naturally and irresistibly 
by unbelievers." # Here is indeed "an argument for 
his superhumanity thai cannot be resisted/ 1 

• BushneU. 



66 CHRIST AXD MODEEX UNBELIEF. 

But I must bring this lecture to a close. I must 
fain be content with having given these little 
glimpses of the great argument for the superhuman 
nature of Jesus which lies hid in the study of his 
character.* Enough is admitted by the ablest and 
most learned critics among unbelievers as to the 
historical character of the Gospels to give us a sure 
basis upon which to build our conception of what 
his character really was. And even if this were not 

* Horace Bushnell writes as follows : " This one perfect 
character has come into our world, and lived in it, filling all 
the molds of action, all the terms of duty and love, with his 
own divine manners, works, and charities. . . . The world 
itself is changed, and is no more the same that it was ; it has 
never "been the same since Jesus left it. The air is charged 
with heavenly odors, and a kind of celestial consciousness, a 
sense of other worlds, is wafted on us in its breath. Let the 
dark ages come, let society roll backward, and churches per- 
ish in whole regions in the earth, . . . still there is a some- 
thing here that was not, and a something that has immortality 
in it. . . . It were easier to untwist all the beams of light in 
the sky, separating and expunging one of the colors, than to 
get the character of Jesus, which is the real gospel, out of the 
world. Look ye hither, meantime, all ye blinded and fallen 
of mankind ; a better nature is among you, a pure heart, out 
of some pure world, is come into your prison, and walks it 
with you. Do you require us to show who he is, and definitely 
to expound his person? We may not be able. Enough to 
know that he is not of us — some strange Being out of nature 
and above it, whose name is Wonder fid. Enough that sin has 
never touched his hallowed nature, and that he is a friend. 
In him dawns a hope — purity has not come into our world 
except to purify. Behold the Lamb of God ! Light breaks in ; 
peace settles on the air ; lo ! the prison walls are giving way ; 
rise, let us go ! n — "Nature and the Supernatural," p. 332. 



THE UNIQUE PERSONALITY OF CHRIST. 67 

the case, the existence of four such portraitures of 
Jesus, so harmonious yet so independent, is explica- 
ble only on the supposition of the historical reality 
of the portraiture. And the character here portrayed 
is plainly that of a superhuman Person. 



IV. 



THE PLAN AND THE TEACHING 
OF CHRIST. 



00 



"Is this great idea, then, which no man ever before con- 
ceived, the raising of the whole human race to God, a plan 
sustained with such evenness of courage and a confidence of 
the world's future so far transcending any human example — 
this a human development? Regard the benevolence of it, 
the universality of it, the religious grandeur of it, as a work 
readjusting the relations of God and his government with 
men ; the cost, the length of time it will cover, and the far-off 
date of its completion — is it on this scale that a Nazarene 
carpenter, a poor, uneducated villager, lays out his plans and 
graduates the confidence of his undertakings? . . . No human 
creature sits quietly down to a perpetual project, one that 
proposes to be executed only at the end, or final harvest of 
the world. That is not human, but divine." — Horace Bush- 
nell. 

"I confess when I can escape the deadening power of 
habit, and can receive the full import of such passages as the 
following : ' Come unto me, all ye that labor and are heavy 
laden, and I will give you rest ; ' ' I am come to seek and to 
save that which was lost ; ' l He that conf esseth me before 
men, him will I confess before my Father in heaven ; ' . . . I 
say, when I can succeed in realizing the import of such pas- 
sages, I feel myself listening to a being such as never before 
and never since spoke in human language. I am awed by the 
consciousness of greatness which these simple words express ; 
and when I connect this greatness with the proof of Christ's 
miracles, I am compelled to speak with the Centurion : ' Truly 
this was the Son of God ! ' " — Channing. 



70 



IV. 

THE PLAN AND THE TEACHING OF CHEIST. 
"Never man spake like this man." — John vii. 46. 

In continuing the discussion of the evidences of 
Christianity in relation to modern unbelief, I reminded 
you that the battle of the faith in our day turns upon 
the nature of Christ's person, and called your atten- 
tion to the order of the argument whereby we main- 
tain that he was the Son of God and the Saviour of 
the world. We do not prove the divinity of his per- 
son by the miracles which he wrought, but we rather 
prove his miracles by his divinity. I then indicated 
the substance of our argument for his divine mis- 
sion, viz. : The character of Jesus is superhuman ; 
the teaching of Jesus is superhuman ; the work of 
Jesus in history and in the human soul is superhu- 
man. Therefore he is himself superhuman. 

I then undertook — and this constituted the body 
of my lecture — to develop the first branch of this 
argument, that, namely, which relates to the charac- 
ter of Christ; and it was my aim to show that it is 
so unique in its moral grandeur thai it evidently be- 
longs to a different category from all other human 

71 



72 CHRIST AND MODERN UNBELIEF. 

characters, so that Jesus Christ cannot be classified 
with men. Here, indeed, we are confronted by a 
paradox : he is evidently human, the truest of men, 
the finest type of the race, the man of men, the mir- 
ror of all that is best and noblest and most heroic in 
man, and yet as evidently is he more than man. The 
more we study his character, the more overwhelming 
grows the conviction that there is in him a nature 
and powers far above the plane of possible human 
attainment. 

This evening I take up another branch of the 
argument — that which relates to the teaching of 
Jesus. And I argue that it is so far above and 
apart from all other human teaching, so fundament- 
ally distinct from and superior to all other, that it 
is evidently superhuman, transcending all possible 
human insight and foresight. u Never man spaJce 
like this man? 

1. Now the first feature of the teaching of Jesus 
which I allege in proof of this claim is the purpose 
he avows and the plan he proposes as the end and 
aim of his mission. This I affirm to be not only 
completely unique and original, but so stupendous, 
so sublime, as plainly to transcend the bounds of 
merely human conception. 

Observe what the purpose avowed by Jesus Christ 
was: to establish a world-wide kingdom on this 
earth in the minds and hearts of mankind. Alex- 



THE PLAN AND THE TEACHING OF CHRIST. 73 

ander undertook to subdue all earthly kingdoms 
in his own generation ; Jesus Christ undertook to 
bring under Ms scepter not only all the peoples 
and kingdoms of one generation, but of all genera- 
tions, present and to come. Paul so understood 
his purpose: "He must reign till he hath put 
all enemies under his feet." He is "above all 
principality, and power, and might, and dominion, 
and every name that is named, not only in this 
world, but also in that which is to come." " King of 
kings and Lord of lords " is the title he calmly as- 
sumes. He foresees his death, but this will be no 
check to his power or to the progress of his kingdom. 
This carpenter of Nazareth, without any appearance 
of presumption, speaks and plans and acts as one 
superior to death (though he knows he is soon to 
die), as one to whom the ages belong, and whose 
work will go on from age to age — ay, unto the ages 
of the ages — and go on under his guidance, under 
his governing hand. He is a man — oh, never was 
such intense and sensitive humanity as his ! — and 
yet, unlike all his predecessors and all who succeeded 
him (to use Mr. Mill's phrase), he seems independent 
of time and death and change; he is the King of 
the ages; eternity is his sphere of action. It is not 
merely that he founds a kingdom which he believes 
will endure; but thai in spite of death he will still 
be the King of this kingdom, the living Ruler of his 



74 CHRIST AND MODERN UNBELIEF. 

Church through all time. It is not that he propounds 
a philosophy which he believes will win its way to 
the assent ultimately of all mankind ; but that he 
establishes a society which will grow as the seed 
grows, which will work as leaven works, and that 
he will be the ever-present Head of that society 
through all the cycling centuries. 

Is it thus that men lay their plans ? Did any other 
man ever dream of such an undertaking ? If any 
living man should hold such language to-day, would 
he be listened to? Would he not be laughed to 
scorn ? Or would he not be pitied as a madman ? 
Yet Jesus Christ was listened to. Men heard him, 
followed him, obeyed him, gave up all for him. More 
wonderful still, myriads who never saw him or heard 
his voice have died for him. 

This is what so impressed the Emperor Napoleon. 
He said in his conversations at St. Helena : "Alex- 
ander, Caesar, Charlemagne, I myself, have founded 
great empires; but upon what did these creations 
of our genius depend? Upon force. Jesus alone 
founded his empire upon love, and to this very day 
millions would die for him. ... I think I under- 
stand something of human nature, and I tell you all 
these were men, and I am a man. None else is like 
him : Jesus Christ was more than man. . . . Christ 
alone has succeeded in so raising the mind of man 
towards the unseen that it becomes insensible to the 



THE PLAN AND THE TEACHING OF CHRIST. 75 

barriers of time and space. Across a chasm of 
eighteen hundred years Jesus Christ makes a demand 
which is beyond all others difficult to satisfy. . . . 
He asks for the human heart 5 he will have it entirely 
to himself; he demands it unconditionally; and 
forthwith his demand is granted. Wonderful ! In 
defiance of time and space the soul of man with all 
its powers and faculties becomes an annexation to 
the empire of Christ. . . . This phenomenon is un- 
accountable; it is altogether beyond the scope of 
man's creative powers. Time, the great destroyer, 
is powerless to extinguish this sacred flame; time 
can neither exhaust its strength nor put a limit to 
its range. . . . This it is which proves to me quite 
convincingly the divinity of Jesus Christ." * 

Yes, the plan of Jesus Christ was so vast in its 
scope, so sublime in its aim — being nothing less than 
the moral and spiritual regeneration of the whole 
human race — that it is not only absolutely unparal- 
leled, but plainly completely beyond the range of 
mere human conception. It soars into a region that 
the mind of man never before aspired to reach. 
Even Channing says: "The idea of changing the 
moral aspect of the whole earth, of recovering all 
nations to the pure and inward worship of the one 
God, and to a spirit of divine and fraternal love, 
was one of which Ave meet not a trace in philosopher 

* Quoted by Liddon, "Bampton Lectures," p, L48. 



76 CUEIST AND MODERN UNBELIEF. 

or legislator before him. The human mind had 
given no promise of this extent of view." * 

Let ns note also, as one of the absolutely unique 
peculiarities of the plan avowed by Jesus, its rela- 
tion to his own person. He was not only the Found- 
er of his kingdom, but its King, its Head ; the liv- 
ing center and heart of its being. Now try for a 
moment to realize what it meant for a man (and a 
poor man, without place or power) to say, " I am the 
light of the world/ 7 u the light that lighteth every 
man that cometh into the world ; " or to say, " Hea- 
ven and earth shall pass away, but my words shall 
not pass away ; " or, " Whoso conf esseth me before 
men, him will I confess before my Father ; " or, 
" I, if I be lifted up, will draw all men unto me ; " 
or, "The Son of Man is come to give his life a 
ransom for many." This young Galilean peasant 
dares to put himself forward as the Saviour of the 
whole world, and makes his own sufferings and 
death a necessary part of his plan for the salva- 
tion of the world. He declares that his cross would 
become the magnet to draw all men unto him. He 
affirms that his blood was to be shed for the remis- 
sion of sins, and that no man could come to the 
eternal Father but by him. He bids all the weary 
children of care and sorrow come unto him and he 
would give them rest. He boldly assumes power to 

* Works, vol. ii. ; p. 57. 



THE PLAN AND THE TEACHING OF CHRIST. 77 

forgive sins, and even when he is nailed to the 
shameful cross and suffering the agonies of a fearful 
death he claims power to open the gates of Paradise 
to the dying thief by his side. When he is leav- 
ing the earth he encourages his disciples by the ex- 
traordinary promise of his perpetual presence : "Lo, 
I am with you alway, even unto the end of the world," 
And as he puts himself forward as the Saviour of 
the world, so also he advances the equally astound- 
ing claim to be the final Judge of quick and dead. 
Yes, the judgment and the final destiny of every in- 
dividual soul of all the multitudinous generations 
of men, and of all races and peoples and tribes of 
mankind, is to be in the hands of this man Jesus of 
Nazareth. What, then, is he ? Who is he ? Whence 
came he? Is he a madman, or is he indeed the 
Christ, the Son of the living God ? That is the in- 
evitable dilemma. 

2. But let us consider the teaching of Jesus in 
some other aspects which equally exhibit its super- 
human character. Here let me interpose an ex- 
planation. We refer to the New Testament as our 
authority for what his teaching really was. And 
we do so without assuming its inspiration or its 
authority. For whatever we think of these books, 
here they are. And even if it were not true (as it 
is) that no competent or intelligent scholar would 
deny that they contain the historical reflection of 



78 CHRIST AND MODERN UNBELIEF. 

the teaching of Jesus, we should still be confronted 
by the extraordinary phenomenon of the sublime 
practical and ethical teaching which they contain, 
incomparably more exalted and majestic than can 
be found in the writings of any philosopher or sage 
of antiquity. And the problem would remain, Who 
could be the author of teaching so sublime? It is 
easier to believe that Jesus taught thus than that 
any of his followers invented such discourses or such 
precepts. 

To return, then. Here we are face to face with 
the unique and wonderful utterances of Jesus Christ. 
Open your New Testament and read the Sermon on 
the Mount, for example, and then tell me where you 
will find another such discourse among all the liter- 
atures of the world. What sage or philosopher ever 
taught as this uneducated young artisan out of an 
obscure Jewish village ? We have read our Cicero, 
our Plato, our Seneca, our Marcus Aurelius; we 
have read translations from many of the much- 
vaunted sacred books of the East ; but none of them 
all can bear any comparison with the simplicity, the 
majesty, the moral breadth, the depth of insight, the 
sublimity of tone, which breathe through the pages 
of the New Testament. It has been well said by an 
author of the last century : "If any one can doubt 
of the superior excellence of this religion above all 
which preceded it, let him but peruse with attention 



THE PLAN AND THE TEACHING OF CHRIST. 79 

those unparalleled writings in which it is transmitted 
to the present times, and compare them with the 
most celebrated productions of the pagan world; 
and if he is not sensible of their superior beauty, 
simplicity, and originality, I will venture to pro- 
nounce that he is as deficient in taste as in faith, 
and that he is as bad a critic as a Christian." * 

But there is much more than this. There is 
about the discourses of Christ an indescribable tone 
and perfume of another world. The voice that 
speaks here carries with it an authority such as is 
felt in no other teacher or philosopher who ever 
taught or wrote. It somehow commands us, and 
holds us, and impresses us, as none other. He does 
not argue with us ; he simply announces his pre- 
cepts or makes his demands as one having authority. 
And our consciences yield obeisance to the kingly 
scepter which he wields in these matchless dis- 
courses and parables and precepts. " The spirit of 
man is the candle of the Lord," says the wise man 
of old. Yes, and this spirit of man responds to the 
teaching of Jesus; recognizes its truth, its author- 
ity. I speak now of moral truth, and 1 affirm that 
we can and do perceive the validity and the obliga- 
tion of a moral principle or precepl when stated. 
It appeals to us. It finds us. It arrests as, and 
we cannot challenge its authority. Now the moral 

* Soame Jenyns. 



80 CHRIST AND MODERN UNBELIEF. 

teaching of Jesus has just this quality. It requires 
no credentials. It is its own witness. It bears 
stamped upon it the image and superscription of the 
King. It is coin of the realm and kingdom of the 
truth, and every son of truth acknowledges its genu- 
ineness and its value. " He that is of God heareth 
my words." Even Goethe confessed that there was 
in the four Gospels "the reflection of a greatness 
which emanated from the person of Jesus, and which 
was as divine ... as was ever seen upon earth. . . . 
I bow before him as the divine manifestation of the 
highest principle of morality." And Theodore Parker 
said of him : " He unites in himself the sublimest 
precepts and divinest practices, thus more than real- 
izing the dream of prophets and sages. . . . He 
pours out a doctrine beautiful as the light, sublime 
as heaven, and true as God." 

I have not time in the limits of this lecture to 
enter upon an analysis of Christ's teaching. Such 
an analysis would show, among other things, its 
characteristic and fundamental difference from all 
other ethical systems, its unexampled catholicity, its 
spotless purity, its freedom from any admixture of 
puerility, or weakness, or local prejudice, or national 
narrowness, or superstition. It would show how it 
discredits many of the most boasted virtues of the 
age in which it appeared, and exalts from the mire 
of contempt to the throne of glory such qualities as 



THE PLAN AND THE TEACHING OF CHBIST. 81 

meekness, humility, purity. It would point out how 
Jesus made love the basis and root of his entire sys- 
tem of ethics and of social law. 

But it is unnecessary that I should enter into an 
extended consideration of the moral teaching of the 
New Testament, inasmuch as its sublimity and su- 
periority are recognized by almost all competent 
critics, including Ernest Eenan and John Stuart 

Mm. 

But I press the question, What account are we to 
give of such teaching? Is it thus that men have 
taught ? Is it a phenomenon that takes its place in 
the course of natural development ? Is it according 
to the law of human development that a young, un- 
educated Galilean youth, born of the narrowest and 
most exclusive race in the world, and brought up in 
a society the most unenlightened, in an age the most 
corrupt, should suddenly rise to the sublimest height 
of moral truth, as far outshining all other great 
teachers as the sun is brighter than the smallest star, 
and that he should reign supreme in the firmament 
for eighteen centuries by the pure brightness and 
effulgence of his own teaching and example — is this, 
I say, a natural phenomenon? or is it not rather 
an event altogether unprecedented, altogether apart 
from natural development, plainly supernatural! 
In the words of Horace Bushnell, "What human 
teacher ever came down thus upon the soul of the 



82 CEMST AND MODERN UNBELIEF. 

race, as a beam of light from the skies, pure light, 
shining directly into the visual orb of the mind, a 
light for all that live, a full transparent day, in 
which truth bathes the spirit as an element? . . . 
Is this human, or is it plainly divine ? " 

3. Once more. Consider more fully the astound- 
ing claims put forth by Jesus of Nazareth, already 
alluded to. Recall his absolutely unparalleled self- 
assertion. He affirms his preexistence — " Before 
Abraham was I am." He associates himself with 
the eternal glory of the heavenly Father in past 
eternity — " Father, glorify thou me with thine own 
self with the glory which I had with thee before 
the world was." He claims coequal honor with the 
Almighty — "All men should honor the Son even as 
they honor the Father ; " coequal knowledge — " No 
man knoweth the Son but the Father, neither 
knoweth any man the Father save the Son ; " * 
coequal power — "All power is given unto me in 
heaven and in earth." He speaks with an author- 
ity as absolute as that which promulgated the 
moral law on Sinai — " It was said to them of* old 
time, but I say unto you." All other prophets and 
teachers sent from God used in their loftiest utter- 
ances the formula, " Thus saith the Lord ; " but this 

* Matt. xi. 27. Observe the Johannean tone of the lan- 
guage here. St. John is fuller than the other evangelists in 
the assertion of our Lord's divinity, "but not stronger. 



THE PLAN AND THE TEACHING OF CHRIST. 83 

man says, " Verily, verily, I say unto you/' " thus 
implicitly placing himself on a line of equality, not 
with Moses, not with Abraham, but with the Lord 
God himself ! " And what was the most prominent 
subject of his teaching? Was it justice, or benevo- 
lence, or meekness, or purity, or patience, or char- 
ity? No: his chief subject was himself. He 
preached himself; and when he sent out his apos- 
tles it was that they should preach Christ Hear 
his words : " I am the way, the truth, and the life f 
" I am the bread of life ; " "I am the good shep- 
herd;" "I am the door;" "I am the true vine;" 
" I am the resurrection and the life ; " " Without 
me ye can do nothing;" "He that abideth in me 
and I in him, the same bringeth forth much fruit ; " 
" No man cometh unto the Father but by me ; " 
" Believe in God, believe also in me ; " " He that 
believeth on me hath eternal life." 

Take note also of his imperious claim to the souls 
of men, to rule them with unchallenged and abso- 
lute authority, to enter into and take possession of 
the deepest sanctities of their being, to stand first 
in their affections, even before father or mother, 
husband, wife, or child ! Could there be a more ab- 
solute claim to equality with God than this? But 
he makes the claim unequivocally and in terms. 
When the Jews charged him with making himself 
God though he was but a man, he did not deny it, 



84 CHRIST AND MODERN UNBELIEF. 

When lie stood on trial before Caiaphas, lie was 
charged with blasphemy in making himself the Son 
of God. Did he repudiate with horror and indig- 
nation such a charge, as he should have done if it 
were not true? Nay, he was silent, and allowed 
himself to be condemned to death upon that charge 
and that only. Again, before Pilate's tribunal, he 
was charged with the same horrible sin : u He ought 
to die," they cried, " because he made himself the 
Son of God." Did he here deny the charge ? Nay, 
he owned the truth of the fact on which they based 
the charge — "Thou sayest it," he answered when 
the Roman judge demanded, "Art thou the Son of 
God?" 

Now two things are here worthy of careful 
consideration. The first is that these amazing 
claims of Jesus so interpenetrate all the Gospels, 
and all parts of the Gospels, his discourses as well 
as the narration of his acts, that there is no possible 
alternative between accepting them as authentic in 
substance, and rejecting the whole narrative as leg- 
endary. The fact that he made these claims is not 
dependent upon the genuineness and authenticity 
of any particular passage or passages. It would 
still remain though one should accept the now dis- 
credited theory of some of the destructive critics 
and reject entirely the Gospel of St. John. It 
would not be invalidated though all the alleged 



THE PLAN AND THE TEACHING OF CHRIST. 85 

legendary elements of the synoptic Gospels were 
cut out of the record. In fact, this peculiarity of 
the person and the words of Jesus is inseparable 
from any possible view of him as an historical 
personage, as much so as oxygen is from the air 
we breathe. 

The other notable fact which should be consid- 
ered in this connection is that notwithstanding this 
self-assertion, which in any other great teacher 
would excite contempt, or ridicule, or indignation, 
he still occupies the highest place in the esteem and 
admiration of mankind, even when these his claims 
are not acknowledged, and still stands out as the 
peerless model of meekness and humility. Chan- 
ning declares that the charge of an extravagant, 
self-deluding enthusiasm is the last to be fastened 
on Jesus. And yet if these claims of his to divine 
honor and power and worship be not just, how can 
he be vindicated from the charge of blasphemous 
presumption or self-deluding enthusiasm? 

The dilemma is inevitable : either he is what he 
professed to be, the Christ, the Son of God, or else 
he is a man who can no longer bo followed as an 
exemplar or trusted as a teacher. But let any 
inquirer consider that dilemma in the lighl of his 
unparalleled moral teaching and his peerless life 
and character and then say which is the more rea- 
sonable conclusion : thai such a man, such a teacher, 



86 CHRIST AND MODERN UNBELIEF. 

such a sublime and royal personage, was after all a 
mad dreamer ; or that his claims were founded on 
truth, that he was all he declared himself to be, that 
we are here in the presence of a superhuman charac- 
ter, a superhuman life, and superhuman wisdom, and 
that this man of Nazareth is indeed the Christ, the 
Son of the living God. 



V. 



THE WOEK OF CHRIST AMONG MEN 
AND IN MAN. 



" Where shall we find in such beauty as we find it in Jesus 
that mirroring purity of soul which the fury of the storm may 
agitate but cannot cloud? Where has there been so grand an 
idea, so restless an activity, so exalted a sacrifice for it as in 
Jesus ? Who has been the founder of a work which has en- 
dowed with as rich treasures, in as high a degree, the masses 
of men and nations through the long ages, as the work which 
bears the name of Christ? As little as mankind can be with- 
out religion, so little can they be without Christ ! " — Strauss 
(a.d. 1839). 

"Ha fallu une effusion de Pamour divin pour sauver l'hu- 
manite. Le sentiment de la charite manquait au monde an- 
cien ; de la Tesprit de division, la guerre des classes, l'escla- 
vage et la decadence. II fallait unir de nouveau les hommes, 
les penetrer des idees de fraternity et d'egalite que la philo- 
sophic avaient apercue, mais qui etaient restees steriles dans 
ses mains. C'est la charite qui produisit cette revolution, le 
plus 6tonnant des miracles operes par Jesus Christ." — Lau- 
rent. 

"The holiest among the mighty, and the mightiest among 
the holy, [He] has lifted with his pierced hand empires off 
their hinges, has turned the stream of centuries out of its 
channel, and still governs the ages." — Jean Paul Richter. 

" By heaven, I long to see a Stoic ! But you have not one 
fully developed? Show me then one who is developing; one 
who is approaching toward this character. Do me this favor ! 
Do not refuse an old man a sight which he has never yet 
seen. " — Epictetus. 



88 



V. 

THE WORK OF CHRIST AMONG MEN AND IN MAN. 

" Believe me for the very works' sake." — John xiv. 11. 

In unfolding the outlines of the argument which 
the Christian apologist opposes to the negations of 
modern unbelief , I have dwelt upon the character of 
Jesus and the plan and the teaching of Jesus as giv- 
ing a sure basis for the conclusion that he was a 
superhuman being — one who cannot, in spite of the 
perfection and beauty of his manhood, be classified 
with men. You have been asked to consider the ex- 
traordinary phenomenon presented by the character 
of Jesus, which is not only unique in its moral per- 
fection (on a plane far above any other human be- 
ing), but also unique in that it presents the one 
solitary example of a sinless man — of a man who 
has no consciousness of sin, and against whom no 
charge of sin can be substantiated, or even with de- 
cency suggested, while at the same time he is the 
universally accepted model of modesty and humility. 
Such a man, I have urged, was plainly superhuman ; 
human nature, as we know it, as the experience of 
all the ages of history reveals it, could not produce 

89 



90 CHRIST AND MODERN UNBELIEF. 

of itself and without supernatural aid such a char- 
acter. 

In my last lecture I carried the argument a step 
further, and asked you to consider the plan and 
the teaching of Jesus, pointing out that it was not 
only unspeakably more sublime than that of any 
other sage or philosopher, but also fundamentally 
and specifically different, transcending all possible 
human insight and foresight. The plan which he 
proposed was so astounding in its reach and in its 
scope as plainly to have been impossible to any 
merely human conception. And his moral teaching 
was so incomparably sublime in its purity and its 
perfection, and so catholic in its adaptation to man- 
kind, that it cannot be accounted for by the law of 
human development, but must be looked upon as 
derived from some source more than human. In 
fact, the doctrines of Christ were as inconceivable to 
the wisest of mankind " as the Newtonian system is 
at this day to the most ignorant tribes of savages " ; 
they were doctrines " which human reason could 
never have discovered " ; and yet " when discovered 
they coincide with and are confirmed by it." 

I now enter upon another branch of the great 
argument. I ask you to take with me a survey of 
what Jesus Christ has wrought in history, and to 
consider whether his work, any more than his char- 
acter or his words, can be catalogued with things 



THE WORK OF CHRIST AMONG MEN 91 

that are merely human, It must needs be a very 
fragmentary and incomplete presentation of such a 
theme that can be given in my limits here. Ade- 
quately to portray it, one would need the power to 
show you all the kingdoms of the world, and all the 
ages of Christian history, with its conflicts and its 
progress, in one short half -hour. But though I shall 
only be able to give a feeble outline of what the 
Nazarene has wrought for this sad and sin-stricken 
earth by the mysterious power of his cross and pas- 
sion, I believe it will be enough for my purpose ; 
enough to convince you (if indeed any of you are 
unconvinced) that a force has been working in Chris- 
tianity which is greater than human, and to draw 
from your lips the confession which I have already 
quoted from the Emperor Napoleon, " Jesus Christ 
was more than man? 

1. First of all, then, in illustration of the super- 
human action of Jesus Christ in history, consider 
the triumphant progress of Christianity in the first 
centuries of our era. It is certain that about a.d. 30 
there was no such thing as the Christian Church, 
nor any men or women calling themselves Chris- 
tians. It is also certain that by the year 64 the 
Christian religion was widely spread in the Roman 
Empire. To this fact we have the testimony of the 
Roman historian Tacitus and of the Roman governor 
Pliny. We have also the undisputed testimony at'- 



92 CHRIST AND MODERN UNBELIEF. 

forded by the first four Epistles of St. Paul, which 
show that the Christian Church was already estab- 
lished and had numerous adherents in Rome, in 
Corinth, and in the province of Galatia. Here, then, 
in the single generation between a.d. 30 and a.d. 64 
the Christian religion had taken its rise, and sprung 
at a bound into wide acceptance. All three of these 
documents testify to this. All three likewise testify 
to the power it exerted over the minds of men : Tac- 
itus, by exhibiting the Christians as " hated by the 
whole human race," yet maintaining their " perni- 
cious superstition" in the face of persecution and 
death ; Pliny, by declaring that such was its success 
that " the temples of the gods stood deserted, and 
sacrifices had for a long time ceased to be offered," 
while the Christians met together in secret places 
before dawn to sing praises to Christ as God, and 
to make solemn engagements one with another not 
to commit any crime or wickedness ; and Paul, by 
giving, in those remarkable and unparalleled letters 
to the Romans, to the Corinthians, and to the G-ala- 
tians, such an inside picture of the faith and the life 
and the moral principles of the earliest Christians 
as proves to every candid mind the extraordinary 
power Jesus of Nazareth wielded over the minds, 
over the hearts, over the lives of his disciples. Study 
those four undisputed Epistles of Paul. I affirm 
that they contain conclusive evidence that Jesus of 



THE WORK OF CHRIST AMONG MEN. 93 

Nazareth, though long since crucified by Pontius 
Pilate, was wielding over men (and among them was 
certainly one man of remarkable genius and force 
of character, Paul himself) a power which has no 
parallel in history, a power which must have been 
superhuman. Hear him affirming that Christ's gos- 
pel was the power of God unto salvation ; that the 
cross of Christ was his glory ; that Christ had re- 
deemed him 5 that the love of Christ constrained 
him ; that he was not his own, but Christ's ; that so 
inspiring and so satisfying was the love of Christ to 
him that even in tribulation and distress and perse- 
cution and famine, and in the face of the sword 
itself, he was more than conqueror. All this is ren- 
dered the more impressive and significant by the 
fact which he himself declares (and remember, his 
honesty is impugned by none), viz., that he had been 
a zealous persecutor of the religion of this Jesus 
whom he now adored. Now here is an example 
which of itself is sufficient to establish the claim 
that Jesus has wrought among men with super- 
human power. The whole argument might be rested 
right here. We need no other witness to establish 
the truth and the more than human power of the 
Christian religion than we find in these undisputed 
Epistles of Paul. 

But I ask you to take a wider view. Follow the 
history of this hated sect of the Nazarenes for two 



94 CHRIST AND MODERN UNBELIEF. 

or three centuries, and behold how it triumphs over 
the religions, over the philosophies, over the super- 
stitions, over the prejudices of mankind ! See how 
it wins its way from town to town, from shore to 
shore, till it becomes the prevailing religion in the 
Roman Empire ! See how it changes the customs, 
and the laws, and the jurisprudence of the world ! 
See how at length the proud eagles, before whose 
conquering might every kingdom of the earth has 
succumbed, at length bow before the mightier might 
of the cross of Christ ! And yet what would have 
seemed more preposterous to any cultivated Roman 
citizen of the age of Tiberius or Nero than the 
predicted triumph of Christianity ! With what fine 
scorn would not Tacitus have treated the suggestion 
that this " pernicious superstition" was destined to 
prevail over the whole extent of the empire within 
two hundred years ! " Everything," it has been said, 
"seemed to conspire to render its victory utterly 
impossible. Its origin was against it, it seemed but 
a Jewish sect. Its advocates and followers had 
nothing attractive about them, and belonged for 
the most part to the lower and uneducated classes. 
Its doctrine was a l stumbling-block ? ; it appeared a 
most vexatious foolishness. Its reverence for God, 
too, was suspected, for the Christians, using no im- 
ages of the gods, were taken for atheists. The 
worst and most immoral things were said of its 



THE WORK OF CHRIST AMONG MEN 95 

mysterious rites. Public opinion was prejudiced 
against them; philosophers assailed Christianity 
with intellectual weapons, while the authorities op- 
posed it with brutal violence." # That was indeed a 
formidable, it seemed an invincible, confederacy 
which Christianity found arrayed against it when it 
entered upon its sublimely audacious task of sub- 
duing the world to Christ. The prejudices and su- 
perstitions of the lower classes; the prestige and 
the antiquity of the existing polytheism ; the keen 
intellects of the philosophers 5 the culture and the 
refinement of the wealthy; and the might of the 
mailed hand of imperial Some herself — all these 
were leagued against this despised and hated sect of 
Christians. And yet it triumphed — triumphed in 
the face of persecutions too dreadful to be described. 
"No age, no sex was spared. All the strength of 
the empire was put in requisition; certain of the 
most energetic of the emperors, such as Decius and 
Diocletian, considered it their special duty to root 
out Christianity from the world, because the very 
existence of the Roman Empire depended on its ex- 
tirpation. But the arm of the executioner failed 
before the fidelity of the Christians." t 

And by what means, by what arms, did it triumph I 
By abjuring every appeal to the passions or lusts or 
desires or ambitions of men ! By demanding that 

* Luthardt, "Fundamental Truths," p. 270. t Idem. 



96 CHRIST AND MODERN UNBELIEF. 

they renounce the honors and glories and emolu- 
ments of the world and embrace (under the then 
conditions of the case) losses, imprisonments, degra- 
dation, death! By holding out as the reward of 
faithful service " tribulation " in this world, immor- 
tality in the world to come ! " Let a man deny him- 
self, and take up his cross and follow me," were the 
words of Jesus. Thus, as Pascal has said, Jesus 
chose means " adapted for defeat," while Mohammed, 
preaching a religion of conquest and of sensuous 
enjoyments, "chose means adapted for conquest." 
No doubt Christianity did hold out rewards even in 
this world which acted as powerful motives ; that is 
to say, the joy of a virtuous life, the blessedness of 
peace with God, the sweetness of pardon, and the 
comfort of a reasonable, religious, and holy hope. 
But I ask, Whence did Jesus of Nazareth receive the 
power thus to rouse the better nature of men to the 
point of preferring spiritual to material joys? How 
was he able to surround the bitter cross with such 
a halo of peace that men were ready to take it up 
and bear it patiently ? Mr. Gibbon, indeed, in his 
famous fifteenth chapter enumerates among the five 
causes for the success of Christianity the hope which 
it held out of immortality. But I ask, How was 
this uneducated Jewish carpenter able to impart to 
the minds of men the firm conviction of immortal- 
ity, which Gibbon confesses the greatest intellects of 



TEE WORK OF CHRIST AMONG MEN. 97 

Greece and Rome had so far failed in doing that 
"it was looked upon as an idle and extravagant 
opinion/ 7 "rejected with contempt by every man of 
a liberal education " ? # I will answer in the skep- 
tical historian's own words, which seem almost to 
have been divinely overruled that he should, like 
Caiaphas, bear unwitting testimony to Christ's su- 
perhuman power : " Since, therefore, the most sub- 
lime efforts of philosophy can extend no further 
than feebly to point out the desire, the hope, or at 
most the probability, of a future state, there is noth- 
ing except a divine revelation that can ascertain the 
existence and describe the condition of the invisible 
country which is destined to receive the souls of 
men after their separation from the body." t 

Yes, verily, this witness, though he takes the stand 
for Antichrist, gives testimony which sustains our 
contention that Jesus Christ is declared by what he 
has wrought to be the Son of God, with power, since 
he has done what the sublimest efforts of philosophy 
failed to do: he has given men assured and joyous 
conviction of immortality — and this " nothing ex- 
cept a divine revelation " could do. 

With confidence, then, the Christian apologist ap- 
peals to history, for its pages contain the indelible 
record of the superhuman action of Jesus Christ 

* "Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire/' vol, ii., p 

t Idem, p. 79. 



98 CHRIST AND MODERN UNBELIEF. 

among men. The triumph of Christianity in those 
first centuries is a phenomenon that refuses to take 
its place in any process of natural evolution, because 
no natural causes are adequate for its explanation. 
He must indeed be the victim of credulity who can 
suppose such events to have taken place, under such 
conditions, without any supernatural cause. 

With admirable force has it been urged that to 
suppose that " these few inconsiderable persons " 
(the first evangelists) "should have been able, in 
the course of a few years, to have spread this 
their religion over most parts of the then known 
world in opposition to the interests, pleasures, am- 
bition, prejudices, and even reason of mankind ; to 
have triumphed over the power of princes, the in- 
trigues of states, the force of custom, the blindness 
of zeal, the influence of priests, the arguments of 
orators, and the philosophy of the world, without 
any supernatural assistance — if any one can believe 
these miraculous events, contradictory to the powers 
and dispositions of human nature, he must be pos- 
sessed of much more faith than is necessary to make 
him a Christian, and remain an unbeliever from 
mere credulity." * 

2. But I pass to another aspect of the superhuman 
action of Jesus Christ — the social and moral reforms 

* Soame Jenyns, " Internal Evidence of the Christian Re- 
ligion," p. 51. 



THE WORK OF CHRIST AMONG MEN. 99 

which his religion has wrought among men. Here 
I am indeed embarrassed by the fruitf ulness of my 
theme, and the narrowness of my limits for its dis- 
cussion. To do it even scant justice it would be 
necessary to photograph by the aid of the best his- 
torians the state of morals, the condition of society, 
the pulse of the people in the Eoman world when 
Jesus of Nazareth first entered into it as a redeeming 
power. And then, having shown the degradation of 
the masses, the pollution of the moral fountains of 
society, the darkness which overhung the horizon of 
the world, both for time and for eternity, to show 
how the coming of the Son of Man changed the 
whole aspect and atmosphere of things; how the 
light that shone from his divine face irradiated the 
darkness with bright beams of hope for the poor, 
for the oppressed, for the slave; how his divine 
voice brought deliverance to the captive, and the 
opening of the prison door to them that were bound. 
But I cannot stay to prove it. I can only assert it, 
and leave it to your own reading to confirm the 
truth of what I say. 

Christianity broke down the walls of national 
jealousy and hatred and proclaimed the brother- 
hood of men, and so introduced a Leaven of loving- 
kindness which slowly permeated and steadily trans- 
formed society. It asserted for every man his 
sonship in the family of God, and so laid the 



100 CHRIST AND MODERN UNBELIEF. 

foundation of personal liberty and individual rights. 
It threw its aegis around the poor and the weak 
and the prisoner, and claimed for them sympa- 
thy and justice and charity. It first unspeakably 
ameliorated the condition of the slave, affirming that 
he was not a chattel, but a brother in the family of 
God, and so sowed the seed which led to the ultimate 
abolition of slavery. It struck the fetters from the 
limbs of woman, and restored her to her rightful 
place as the helpmeet and companion and peer of 
man. It took from the father the power of life and 
death over his children, and made the paternal rela- 
tion holy and beautiful. It gave to marriage a sanc- 
tity which it was sacrilege to violate, and elevated 
love from the depths of sensuality to the throne of 
purity. It seized and strangled those unnatural 
vices which Plato in deep sorrow saw eating out the 
vigor and manhood of Greece but despaired of ever 
eradicating. It abolished the cruel and bloody 
games of the gladiatorial arena. It at length drove 
from the stage the licentious shows which so deeply 
depraved the morals of the people. It rooted out 
the prevalent crime of infanticide — that revolting 
and inhuman practice which, more than almost any- 
thing else, revealed the corruption of the human 
heart under the blight of paganism. It developed 
the humane instincts of men, and created the hospital 



THE WORK OF CHRIST AMONG MEN 101 

and the orphan asylum, and a host of kindred insti- 
tutions of charity. It reformed the principles of 
legislation, and laid the foundations of the new sci- 
ence of international law. 

What shall I more say in this fleeting moment to 
declare what Jesus Christ has wrought for man? 
What one thing shall I adduce as the supremest 
manifestation of his beneficent power among men ? 
Ah ! he created the Christian Church, which, with all 
its imperfections, with all its frequent apostasies 
from the spirit and the principles of its Master and 
Head, is nevertheless the divinest and the holiest 
and the most beneficent institution that ever existed 
on this earth. Even Ernest Renan exclaims : " Let 
us bow before the supreme miracle of this great 
Church, the inexhaustible mother of unceasingly 
varied manifestations." * 

And now, my brethren, what account are we to 
give of these phenomena thus rapidly surveyed? 
Are they natural phenomena? Do the principles 
and powers which history and experience make us 
familiar with as those which belong to man even in 
his highest developments of genius and his noblest 
achievements of moral power, suffice to explain the 
facts before us? Surely not. Neither does history 
give any parallel, ancient or modern, to these achieve- 

* "Marcus Aurelius," p, 369. 



102 CHRIST AND MODERN UNBELIEF. 

ments of Jesus Christ, nor any promise or germ of 
the development of any such power. The Christian 
history, like the character and the words of Christ, 
is unique. It stands alone, without a peer or a 
rival. And the only reasonable conclusion is that 
a power was at work in it which was more than 
human ; in other words, that Jesus of Nazareth 
was what he claimed to be, and what the Christian 
Church from the beginning believed him to be, the 
Son of God. 

3. My subject has yet another aspect, more im- 
portant, perhaps, than either of those yet presented : 
Christ's power over individual souls ; his power of 
personal renovation of character ; his power to trans- 
form men from slaves of lust and self to servants 
and sons of Grod. Paganism, in the persons of its 
noblest philosophers, its greatest seers, lamented its 
inability to give power to tread the path of virtue 
which it pointed out and recommended. Ovid's 
lament tells the universal story of failure: u Video 
meliora, proboque; deteriora sequor 1 " To see the right, 
and to approve it — this the philosopher could do ; 
but ah, to do the right — that was the difficulty ! 
Whence to gain the poiver and the will to do it ? Age 
to age repeated the question, but no answer came 
till Jesus of Nazareth proclaimed himself the Ee- 
deemer as well as the Light of the world. The 
Stoic philosophy was the noblest attempt of the 



THE WORK OF CHRIST AMONG MEN. 103 

mind of man to lift the world up to a lofty moral 
ideal. But it failed ; and it felt its failure bitterly. 
Epictetus, the grandest of them all, cries out in de- 
spair : " Show me a true Stoic — one who really exem- 
plifies the principles of the school — for I have never 
seen one." It could not bestow the power to tread 
the path of duty which it urged men to follow. 

But precisely this is what Jesus Christ, and he 
alone, has been able to do. I will adduce in con- 
firmation of this statement, not the opinions of 
Christians, but of eminent antagonists of the Chris- 
tian religion. 

" There have been professors of virtue," says Re- 
nan, " more austere, perhaps firmer, but there never 
have been like masters in the science of goodness. 
The joy of the soul is the grand Christian art."* 
"What needs admitting, or rather proclaiming, by 
agnostics who would be just," says Cotter Morrison, 
one of the ablest of them all, " is that the Christian 
doctrine has a power of cultivating and developing 
saintliness which has had no equal in any other 
creed or philosophy." 

"It strengthens the will, raises and purifies the 
affections, and finally achieves a conquest over the 
baser self in man." t 

Yes, " their rock is not as our Rock, our enemies 

* "Marcus Aurelius," p. 371. 
t " The Service of Man," p. 197. 



104 CHRIST AND MODERN UNBELIEF. 

themselves being judges." And what is the explana- 
tion of this unique moral power that resides in Chris- 
tianity ? For answer let me recall the utterance of 
Mr. Lecky in a passage already quoted (p. 57), where- 
in he declares that Jesus Christ "has exerted so 
deep an influence that it may be truly said that the 
simple record of three short years of active life has 
done more to regenerate and soften mankind than 
all the disquisitions of philosophers and than all the 
exhortations of moralists." 

Here I rest my argument. What further con- 
firmation do we need of the more than human power 
that dwelt in Jesus of Nazareth ? This philosoph- 
ical historian, calmly and dispassionately analyzing 
Christianity as a phenomenon which demands ex- 
planation, himself not a disciple of Jesus — nay, a 
skeptic — finds that "through all the changes of 
eighteen centuries " Christ has " filled the hearts of 
men with an impassioned love." I put it to your 
common sense: Is it within the range of merely 
human power thus to establish an empire of love in 
the hearts of fifty-four generations of men ? and to 
do this after he is dead, and among men who have 
never seen his face or heard his voice? and to wield 
this marvelous power (as the historian assures us), 
not on men or women of a particular race or tem- 
perament, but among "all ages, nations, tempera- 
ments, and conditions " ? I ask you to say whether 



THE WORK OF CHRIST AMONG MEN 105 

you can conceive of any merely human influence 
rising to such a height of power as to become, as 
the historian testifies Jesus Christ has become, " not 
only the highest pattern of virtue, but the highest 
incentive to its practice"? Let those who have 
largest experience of the powers and capacities of 
men say whether it is believable that the record of 
three short years of active life should have "done 
more to regenerate and soften mankind than all the 
disquisitions of philosophers and than all the exhor- 
tations of moralists," and yet that that life should 
have had nothing in it above the plane of these hu- 
man lives of ours, and that record should not have 
carried with it a superjiuman power. It is a con- 
clusion which only a very credulous person could 
deliberately adopt. Reason rejects the hypothesis 
as absurd, because it contradicts one of her first 
principles, that every effect must have an adequate 
cause. 

This majestic and marvelous effect, which we see 
in the victory of Christ over the Roman Empire, over 
its religion, its superstition, its philosophy, its phys- 
ical might ; in the elevating and ennobling influence 
of his kingdom over society and civilization ; and in 
his conquest of the hearts of uncounted millions of 
men and his renovation of their lives — this, 1 say, is 
an effect so stupendous thai enlightened reason must 
refuse to believe it could have proceeded from any 



106 CHRIST AXD MODEEX UXBELIEF. 

merely human source. The only adequate cause for 
Christ's work is a superhuman cause* 

* " The future is lighted for us with the radiant colors of 
hope. Strife and sorrow shall disappear. Peace and love 
shall reign supreme. The dream of poets, the lesson of priest 
and prophet, the inspiration of the great musician, is con- 
firmed in the light of modern knowledge ; and as we gird our- 
selves for the work of life we may look forward to the time 
when in the truest sense the kingdoms of this world shall 
become the kingdom of Christ, and he shall reign forever and 
ever, King of kings and Lord of lords." — John Fiske. 



VI. 



MIEACLES AND THE MODERN VIEW 
OF THE WORLD. 



107 



" The natural and the spiritual miracles of the sacred nar- 
rative are only the notes of a higher harmony which resound 
throughout the discord of earthly history. " — Beyschlag. 

"All that Hume has made out is that no evidence can 
prove a miracle to any one who did not previously believe the 
existence of a being or beings with supernatural power." — 
John Stuart Mill. 

" Dieu, peut-il f aire des miracles, c'est a dire, peut-il deroger 
aux lois qu'il a etablies? Cette question serieusement traitee 
serait impie, si elle n'etait absurde." — Rousseau. 

"The scientific difficulty with regard to miracles will en- 
tirely disappear if any view of the universe be accepted which 
implies the presence in it of living beings much more powerful 
than ourselves." — Stewart and Tait (in "The Unseen Uni- 
verse.") 

" A miracle is not unnatural, that is contrary to, and not 
only different from, the observed course of phenomena. . . . 
Let it once be seen that the law necessarily involves the idea 
of a power acting according to the law, and acting freely, . . . 
and there will be no more difficulty in feeling that the miracu- 
lous action of God is as truly natural — that is, in accordance 
with what we may expect from a consideration of the whole 
scheme of nature — as his ordinary action. ... In other 
words, if miracles are unnatural then we are hopelessly in- 
closed within the barriers of material laws and absolutely 
shut off from all intercourse with the Infinite." — Westcott. 



108 



VI. 

MIRACLES AND THE MODERN VIEW OF THE WORLD. 

" Jesus of Nazareth, a man approved of God among you by- 
miracles and wonders and signs, which God did by him in the 
midst of you, as ye yourselves also know." — Acts ii. 22. 

Those who have followed the argument which I 
have hitherto traced in these lectures will remember 
that I have undertaken to give valid reasons for be- 
lieving in the superhuman nature of Jesus, without 
assuming either the inspiration or authority of the 
New Testament, or the certainty of his having 
wrought the miracles there recorded. I have waived 
all the doctrines of the Christian religion, and made 
my appeal to facts that cannot be denied or disputed. 
I have pointed to the character of Christ, and I have 
challenged any man to give a rational account of it 
except on the ground of its reality and of its being a 
copy of a superhuman original. I have cited the 
teaching of Jesus, his stupendous plan and his unique 
and flawless ethical precepts — another tact as unde- 
niable as the light — and I have asked if these be not 
plainly beyond the reach of any mere human sage. 
I have finally appealed to his action in history, in 

L09 



HO CHRIST ASD MODERN VXBELIEF. 

society, in the church, and in the individual soul; 
and I have urged that here too is a fact that defies 
explanation upon any other ground than this — that 
it was and is the action of a superhuman Being. 
Thus we have a threefold cord to bind us to belief 
in the superhumanness of Christ : his character, his 
teaching, his acts. They are undeniable facts, and 
they are intelligible only on the supposition of the 
presence in them all of a superhuman personality. 

There is only one way of evading the force of this 
argument, and that is by an a priori assumption that 
the superhuman is in itself incredible, and therefore, 
whatever may be the explanation of the marvelous 
facts to which I have appealed, we cannot accept the 
one suggested, because the superhuman, like the su- 
pernatural, is unbelievable. 

Now the discussion of this assumption brings up 
the whole question of miracles, because, though we 
do not put forward Christ's miracles as the proof of 
his divine character, yet, after all, he himself, as a 
superhuman being, is a miracle ; and if miracles are 
impossible or incredible, he is so also. 

I propose, then, this evening to examine the ob- 
jections made to miracles, and to show, first, that 
miracles are possible ; secondly, that they are prob- 
able ; thirdly, that they have actually occurred. 

Let me first state the objection. It is the proud 
boast of modern science that it has demonstrated 



MIRACLES. HI 

the unity and universality of cosmical law. This 
magnificent and complex frame of nature is one ; it 
is a unit, a universe. And it is held together by 
a system of universal laws, whose sway extends 
throughout the illimitable extent of the creation, 
binding alike the smallest atom and the mightiest 
planet. Gravitation, for example, which governs 
the motion of the orange as it falls from the tree, 
governs also the courses of the most distant suns 
and stars. The same chemical laws that are ob- 
served in substances on this globe of ours obtain 
also in the great sun itself : of this the spectrum 
gives us palpable demonstration. And as these 
laws are universal in space, so also are they uni- 
versal in the sphere of time: of this Geology, as 
she reads in the strange palimpsest of the rocks 
the story of remote prehistoric ages, gives us firm 
assurance. In a word, all things, through all ages, 
seem bound with a chain of physical necessity by 
the law of cause and effect. 

Now we are told that as long as this unity and 
uniformity of natural law was not known or under- 
stood men could readily and reasonably believe that 
God intervened here and there in history and worked 
miracles. But now, in this our day, when this won- 
derful order of nature has been unveiled to our 
eyes, it is no longer possible to believe in miracles. 
To quote from a notorious book which ran a course 



112 CHBIST AND MODERN UNBELIEF. 

of popularity three or four years ago but is already 
almost forgotten: "Miracle may be the child of 
imagination, of love, nay, of passionate sincerity, 
but invariably it lives with ignorance and is with- 
ered by knowledge." 

Undoubtedly the modern mind is strongly averse 
to the belief in miracle. The theist, even, objects, 
for he sees in it on God's part arbitrariness, yea, a 
breaking of his own law, and "on the part of the 
world an interruption of her legitimate course."* 
"A miracle," says Strauss, "would be a rent in the 
world? Now in opposition to this I maintain that 
belief in miracle is as reasonable now as it ever was ; 
that it is not in the least inconsistent with modern 
science (unless we set out with a false conception of 
what a miracle truly is); that belief in miracle is 
necessitated by a comprehensive view of nature and 
man ; and that, in particular, belief in the miracle of 
Christianity is the only hope of a sinful and sorrow- 
ful world. 

In maintaining this position I am alive to the 
vital importance of the issue involved. I have said 
that Christianity might be true even if the miracles 
recorded in the New Testament were not true. Yes ; 
but it does not follow from this that the question 
of the miraculous is of secondary importance and 
does not affect the essence of the Christian religion. 

* Uhlhorn. 



MIRACLES. 113 

Christianity is indeed independent of the truth of 
any particular miracle (save only the incarnation 
and the resurrection), but it is not independent of 
the question of the possibility of miracles. On the 
contrary, that question touches the very heart and 
life of Christianity. If there be no miracle, then 
there is no Christianity, there is no Christ; for 
Christ is the greatest of miracles, and Christ is 
Christianity. 

Nor is this all. If miracles are impossible, or at 
least incredible, then there is no revelation of God 
to man ; for it, too, is a miracle. Nor is even this 
the whole result of that denial. There is, in that 
case, no personal God, for a God who is shut out of 
his own world, who cannot, by the supposition, in- 
tervene for the help of his own children if he will, 
is no God. He may be a great artificer, a great 
mechanic, but he is not the Omnipotent One. Nay, 
logically, we must go further even than this, and 
deny the creation; for if miracle is impossible, 
how can we believe that the visible universe was 
created ? When there was no universe, was not its 
coming into being a miracle ? Will any man pre- 
tend that any one or all of the laws or forces of 
nature is enough to account for the origin of the 
universe? Was it natural or supernatural that this 
great universe (or the seeds and germs of it, if you 
prefer) should come into existence ? 



214 CHRIST AND MODERN UNBELIEF. 

But worst of all : if miracle be incredible, if God's 
Jiands are tied so that he cannot intervene in the 
processes of nature or the evolution of history, 
then there is no living God who can hear and help 
us when we cry to him. We may pray, but no 
almighty arm can be stretched out for our deliver- 
ance in response to our prayer. We are caught in 
the coil of an iron chain of necessary causes and 
effects. We are not the free sons of a loving Father, 
but the slaves of an adamantine fate. Nay, we are 
orphans in a fatherless world ! 

1. But leaving the consequences of the denial of 
miracle, let us proceed to the discussion of our sub- 
j ect. My first proposition is that miracles are possible 
and credible. Observe the ground upon which they 
are held impossible, or at least incredible. Strauss's 
statement of it, just quoted, is the most forcible : 
"A miracle would be a rent in the world." But 
why? Various reasons are given. " Because it vio- 
lates the laws of nature," says one. " Because it sus- 
pends them," says another. " Because it faults the 
omniscience or the wisdom of God," says a third. 

But a miracle is not necessarily either a violation 
or a suspension of the laws of nature. Hume so 
defined it, but we do not accept his definition. It is 
not the Bible view. It is not the Christian view. 
Neither do we acknowledge that to suppose mira- 
cles necessary is to suppose that God's wisdom or 



MIRACLES. 115 

omniscience was at fault in the original order of 
nature. On the contrary, we find in them a special 
manifestation of wisdom and love to meet the need 
of his children. The occurrence of a miracle implies 
the presence of a supernatural or superhuman force 
— a power outside of and superior to the forces 
which energize in man or in nature. It is, in other 
words, a " manifestation of the divine activity which 
exhibits some special purpose on the part of God." 
But it is a mere assumption to affirm that this su- 
pernatural force cannot enter into the stream of 
natural causes without violating or suspending the 
operation of those laws or forces. 

It is necessary here to have clear views of God 
and of nature. Miracles are of course incredible to 
an atheist, because there is no God to work them. 
Equally impossible of belief are they to a pantheist 
like Spinoza, because only a personal God can work 
with a special purpose. They are of course beyond 
the pale of things credible to any man who holds, 
with the author of the Vie de Jesus, " As for me, I 
think that there is not in the universe any intelli- 
gence superior to that of man." 

But I speak to those who believe that God is 
actively, vitally, incessantly, and everywhere present 
in the world; yet that it is pliant and flexible to 
his will as my hand is to me; that he is personally 
distinct from it; that it is his garment, not his 



116 CHRIST AND MODERN UNBELIEF. 

monument, and that he is the all-wise and the 
omnipotent. 

If there be such a God, why should miracles be 
impossible ? " Because they would break the order 
which this all-wise God has established. They 
would disturb the operation of his laws, which 
modern science shows are uniform and universal in 
their action. And so we should have arbitrariness 
and caprice substituted for law and order." 

Such an objection loses sight of one entire hemi- 
sphere of God's universe. It overlooks the fact that 
there is a moral order as well as a natural order in 
God's creation, and that the natural order is inferior 
to and must be subservient to the moral. The 
system of things is but a small part of God's crea- 
tion. There is also a system of souls, of moral 
beings. Man and his interests and his activity must 
be reckoned with as well as nature. And as a matter 
of fact man is every day doing ivhat these objectors 
declare God cannot do. That is to say, man is by his 
free will and unfettered choice interfering with, 
modifying, changing the course of nature, without 
any of the disastrous results which we are told 
would follow if God should so interfere. 

I say man is " changing the course of nature," 
because man is not as to his ivill a part of the order 
of nature. His body is held in the chain of physical 
cause and effect. That far he belongs to what we 



MIRACLES. 117 

mean by " nature/' and is under the dominion of the 
laws of nature. But his will is not part of that 
order; cannot be catalogued among the forces of 
nature ; lies outside of that stream of uniform se- 
quences that flow everywhere and always from the 
laws of nature. Consequently, to represent the uni- 
verse as under the bond of uniform law, undisturbed, 
unmodified by any force or power outside of the 
forces of nature, is to grossly misrepresent the actual 
state of the case. The will of man (which governs 
the action of man) is distinctly a force apart from 
and independent of the chain of unchangeable cause 
and effect. It cannot be calculated or weighed, or 
in any manner determined beforehand. It is the 
unknown quantity in the equation. Consequently 
the actual universe does not move like a machine in 
one fixed groove by the force of unchangeable law, 
but as it were in an eccentric curve, which is the 
resultant of two forces, a known and an unknown ; 
the force of natural and unchangeable law, and 
the force of man's will, which is extra-natural and 
variable. 

Here, then, is a force outside of nature, the will 
of man, acting upon the chain of cause and effect ; 
moving it ; modifying the operation of the laws of 
nature ; changing the order of physical nature — do- 
ing, in a word, the very thing we are told Cod can- 
not do ! This imponderable, incalculable force, man's 



118 CHRIST AND MODERN UNBELIEF. 

will, takes hold of the chain of natural causes and 
turns a wilderness into a garden ; or cuts a channel 
through the isthmus of Suez ; or drains a marsh and 
makes it a fruitful field and a healthy instead of a 
sickly dwelling-place. In all these cases man cer- 
tainly interferes with and modifies the result of natu- 
ral law ; but does he violate nature's laws ? does he 
suspend them ? Suppose a cannon-ball is fired, or a 
stone hurled into the air : is the law of gravitation 
violated ? Does it cease to operate one instant dur- 
ing the rapid flight of the stone or the cannon-ball, 
driven by a force stronger than gravitation ? 

Now substitute the will of Grod for the will of man, 
and we have a miracle. G-od may conceivably per- 
form the miracle by using one force of nature to 
overcome another, as we see dynamic force over- 
coming mechanical force, or vital force neutralizing 
chemical 5 or he may accomplish the result by a di- 
rect act of his omnipotent will. But in any case the 
order of nature is not violated, the laws of nature 
are not suspended, the harmony of the kosmos is not 
disturbed. There is no rent in the universe ; but on 
the contrary, as we shall see, there is a healing of 
a breach, a restoration of a lost order, effected by 
means of miracle. 

Surely God must be at least as free as man in his 
own world! In the light of these considerations 
who will question the justness of Rousseau's remark, 



MIRACLES. 119 

" Seriously to raise the question [whether God can 
perform miracles] would be impious if it were not 
absurd" ? Or who will be ashamed to take his stand 
with Richard Rothe (one of the most enlightened 
and liberal theists of our age), who said, " I will 
frankly confess that up to this hour I have never 
been able to discover any stumbling-block to my in- 
tellect in the conception of a miracle " ? 

2. Miracles, then, are possible ; they are not in 
themselves incredible. But I advance a step fur- 
ther, and affirm that they are probable. And for 
this reason. It is evident that the world is not in a 
natural state. " Disorder " is as plainly written upon 
the face of society and upon the moral state of 
the individual man as " order" is upon the face of 
nature. Sin is here ! Whoever ignores this tragic, 
tremendous fact can have no approach to a true 
reading of the state of the world. Its blighting 
touch, its sirocco breath, its destroying hand, are 
everywhere — upon the body, upon the soul, upon 
society, upon the world itself. It has broken the 
harmony and unity of the world. It has violated 
the integrity of nature. It has made awful discord 
in the anthem of creation. 

Men talk of miracles breaking the order of nature. 
Why, its order has been broken for immemorial 
ages by this destroying force of sin! The moral 
order, too, which is far higher and more important 



120 CHRIST AND MODERN UNBELIEF. 

than the natural order, has been violently and dis- 
astrously disturbed, so that it would be truer to call 
it a moral chaos. Now, in view of this sad and sor- 
rowful condition of mankind, we ask, is it probable 
or not that God, if there be a God, and he be merci- 
ful and compassionate as well as powerful, would 
intervene in the affairs of the world in order to re- 
veal to man some way of deliverance from his evil 
moral state? I hold that such an interposition 
would be in the highest degree reasonable. It would 
be a denial of himself if God did not intervene. But 
this intervention, in whatever way made, would of 
necessity be miraculous. It would be a manifesta- 
tion of God for a special purpose, and in a special 
form. Here let me call attention to the true nature 
of miracles. They are not mere marvels, mere dis- 
plays of supernatural power. They invariably have 
a moral aim. They embody a redemptive purpose. 
They are healing agencies. Their purpose is to re- 
store the broken unity of nature and of man, to 
bring back the lost order and harmony of the world, 
to reconcile the discords of life, and so at last to fill 
the universe with peace and joy. 

Nor are the miracles arbitrary or capricious. They 
are part of a great moral order. They are above 
and beyond the track of mere physical law, but they 
belong to God's higher sphere and order of spiritual 
government, and are under reason and law as truly 



MIRACLES. 121 

as the chemical or the vital forces in the sphere of 
physical nature. They are supernatural, but not 
anti-natural. 

When, therefore, we approach the consideration of 
the evidence by which the miracles are supported, 
we must remind ourselves that a special intervention 
of God for the help of man involved in the fatal net 
of moral evil was probable just in proportion as we 
believe God to be the compassionate Father as well 
as the omnipotent Creator of the world. And such 
an intervention must needs be miraculous. 

3. I come now to my third and last proposition : 
Miracles have occurred. 

In proof of this I point to Jesus Christ. I have 
shown that it is possible for God to intervene in the 
affairs of the world. I have also shown that, the 
state of mankind being what it is, and God being 
such a God as we believe him to be, a Father as well 
as a Creator, it is probable he would intervene. Now 
I affirm that we have in Jesus Christ the proof that 
he has intervened for man's help. In him we see a 
superhuman character, superhuman wisdom, super- 
human power. His person, his teaching, his work, 
his empire over human hearts, are all such that we 
cannot classify him with men. In him we have 
evidently a manifestation of the divine: he is Bm- 
manuelf God with us. Only divine power could pro- 
duce such a manifestation as we Bee in the Christ of 



122 CHRIST AND MODERX VSBELIEF. 

history. Yes, we need no further proof that mira- 
cles have occurred than we have in the character 
and teaching and work of Jesus of Nazareth as they 
stand indelibly written on the pillars of time — and 
as every man who can read and think must, if he is 
candid, acknowledge them to be. The Miracle of 
miracles is Jesus Christ. 

What now of the miracles recorded in the New 
Testament ? Did they occur ? 

You will observe I have not alleged Christ's mira- 
cles in proof of his divine mission. If he wrought 
miracles (as we believe), then they were credentials 
of his mission to those who witnessed them, and to 
those who lived in the time of those who witnessed 
them. But for its they have not the same evidential 
power, because of the lapse of time and the long and 
complicated chain of evidence necessary to establish 
their occurrence. To us the long ages of Christian 
history are the credentials of his mission. These 
convince us (not the miracles) that Jesus was the 
Christ. 

But now with this great conviction reached we 
return to the question of the miracles of Christ, and 
lo ! it stands in a totally different light. That such 
a being as Jesus should work miracles was to be ex- 
pected. He could not but work miracles, one would 
say. It would have been a miracle if he had not. 
We have found his character and his words and his 



MIRACLES. 123 

work in history superhuman. Then his life must 
have been superhuman too. Such an one as he 
could not move among the forces of nature like 
other men at all times. 

When, theref ore, we find the record of miracles in 
the Gospels we are not surprised. It is only natural 
the he who wields such power over the turbulent 
waves of human passion should have been able to 
still the storm on the Lake of Gennesaret. It is 
perfectly consistent that he whose voice has for 
nearly nineteen centuries been calling men out of 
the charnel-houses of lust and crime into the light 
and liberty of virtue and purity of life should have 
been able by the word of his omnipotence to call 
Lazarus forth from the grave after he had been dead 
four days already. 

The moral miracles are mightier and more mar- 
velous than the physical ones. 

We cannot doubt, then, that Jesus wrought mira- 
cles. The records of his religion state that he did. 
It is absolutely certain that his disciples believed 
that he did. Let those who affirm the existence of 
legendary elements in the Gospels cut away as much 
of the record as they will, they cannot cut the mi- 
raculous out of it without completely destroying the 
whole. 

So far, then, as the essence of Christianity is con- 
cerned, it is comparatively of small moment whether 



124 CHRIST AND MODERN UNBELIEF. 

you are able to believe this or that particular mira- 
cle, but it is absolutely illogical and unreasonable — 
yes, I dare to say also unscientific — to disbelieve that 
Christ worked miracles, if you believe there was such 
a Being as we have found him to be. Faith in the 
supernatural Christ carries with it faith in the mira- 
cles he wrought. We hold this faith with the aris- 
tocracy of the world's great thinkers, and we hold 
it without prejudice to our faith in the splendid 
achievements of modern science in all its depart- 
ments of investigation. 



VII. 

MODERN THEORIES OF THE RESUR- 
RECTION OF JESUS. 



125 



a On a large view of the life of humanity the Resurrection 
is antecedently likely. So far from being beset by greater 
difficulties than any other historical fact, it is the one fact 
toward which the greatest number of lines of evidence con- 
verge. In one form or other pre-Christian history is a proph- 
ecy of it, and post-Christian history an embodiment of it. . . . 
Indeed, taking all the evidence together, it is not too much to 
say that there is no single historic incident better or more 
variously supported than the Resurrection of Christ. Nothing 
but the antecedent assumption that it must be false could 
have suggested the idea of deficiency in the proof of it." — 
Westcott. 

" In a life such as that of Jesus, it is death which is against 
nature ; the Resurrection is a return to the normal state of 
things, which had been momentarily interrupted." — Godet. 

"It would be difficult to understand how from a society 
held together by over-excitement, issuing in visions, could 
have proceeded the Christian Church, with its lucidity of 
thought and earnestness of moral activity. . . . For this fail- 
ing faith which threatens altogether to faint away at sight of 
physical dissolution, the Lord's Resurrection is a spectacle of 
triumph. It opposes one sight to another." — Keim. 



126 



VII. 

MODERN THEORIES OF THE RESURRECTION OF JESUS. 

"Jesus Christ . . . declared to be the Son of God with 
power . . . by the Resurrection from the dead." — Rom. i. 3, 4. 

I POINTED out in my last lecture the futility of the 
objections made by unbelievers to the belief in mira- 
cle, and I hope made good the position that such 
belief is not in the least degree inconsistent with the 
deductions of reason or the conclusions of modern 
science. Only by denying a personal God can it be 
maintained that miracles are impossible. Only by 
denying both the sin of the world and the goodness 
of God can it be questioned that miracles are proba- 
ble. Only by blotting from the page of history the 
character and the teaching and the work of Jesus 
can it be even plausibly denied that miracles have 
actually occurred. 

Jesus Christ is himself the supreme miracle. But 
we do not prove his divine mission by Ms miracles. 
They have not the same evidential force for the nun 
of the nineteenth century as for those of the first, 
simply because we are removed from their occur- 
rence by so wide a tract of time. To us the moral 

V21 



128 CHBIST AND MODERN UNBELIEF. 

miracles are more convincing than the physical 
ones 5 and every year that rolls by adds to their 
number and their weight. 

On the other hand, Jesns Christ is himself the 
sufficient proof of his miracles. Such an one as he 
could not but have wrought miracles. We must 
therefore put into the scale with the evidence for the 
particular miracles recorded in the New Testament 
this weighty presupposition in their favor. It can- 
not indeed be said that our faith in Christ or in 
Christianity depends upon the certainty of any par- 
ticular miracle recorded of him, as, for example, the 
opening of the eyes of blind Bartimeus, or the rais- 
ing of Lazarus from the dead. But it must be said 
that faith in miracle is essential to any intelligent 
faith in Christ. A Christ without miracle would be 
a contradiction in terms. 

In the present lecture, however, I ask your consid- 
eration of a particular miracle which may fairly be 
said to be an essential part of Christianity, historic- 
ally and doctrinally too. I refer to the Resurrection 
of Christ. It stands upon a different footing from 
any other miracle — the incarnation alone excepted. 
It is not merely a part of the Christian history and of 
the Christian doctrine, it is an essential part. It was 
the crown and consummation of the life and work 
of Jesus. In it was bound up the hope of the world. 
Upon it was built the Christian Church, which is 



THEORIES OF TEE RESURRECTION. 129 

" the Church, of the Resurrection " as the gospel is 
" the gospel of the Resurrection." Upon its objective 
reality rested the whole superstructure of Christian- 
ity. If the certainty of this fact should be under- 
mined, the Apostle saw the entire Christian system 
collapse in ruin. " If Christ be not risen/ 7 he ex- 
claims, " then is our preaching vain, and your faith 
is also vain. Yea, and we are found false witnesses 
of God ; because we have testified of God that he 
raised up Christ : whom he raised not up, if so be 
that the dead rise not" (I. Cor. xv. 14, 15).* 

Now it appears that the first preachers of Chris- 
tianity appealed to the Resurrection of Jesus on the 
third day after his crucifixion as the sufficient proof 
of his divine mission. Thus Paul in our text affirms 
that Jesus Christ was " declared to be the Son of 
God with power by the 'Resurrection from the dead? 
In other words, the Resurrection of Christ was the 
supreme evidence of the truth of Christianity. 

* "If the Kesurrection be not true, the basis of Christian 
morality, no less than the basis of Christian theology, is 
gone." Yes, for "even in its ethical aspect Christianity does 
not offer a system of morality, but a universal principle of 
morality which springs out of the Resurrection." u The issue 
cannot be stated too broadly. We are not Christians unless 
we are clear in our confession on this point. To preach the 
fact of the Resurrection was the first Function of tin* evangel- 
ists; to embody the doctrine of the Resurrection is tin 1 great 
office of the Church; to Irani the meaning of the Resurrection 
is the task not of our age only, but of all." W '. "The 

Gospel of the Resurrection," pp. 7, 8. 



130 CHRIST AND MODERN UNBELIEF, 

How stands the case to-day ? Has the Resurrec- 
tion any evidential value for us of the nineteenth 
century ? 

By many it will be replied that this stupendous 
miracle, instead of being for us the chief proof of 
Christianity, is in fact the chief burden and difficulty 
in the way of its acceptance. 

I maintain, on the contrary, that the evidence for 
the Resurrection is clear and convincing, that the 
fact itself is in complete harmony with the person 
and supposed mission of Jesus Christ, and conse- 
quently that it stands firm to-day as an independent 
argument for the truth of Christianity. One of the 
most careful and profound thinkers of our time has 
said : " It is not too much to say that there is no sin- 
gle historic incident better or more variously sup- 
ported than the Resurrection of Jesus Christ." * 

Now the first question that arises in this inves- 
tigation is : Upon what testimony is the belief in 
the Resurrection supported? To this my narrow 
limits will permit me to give only a partial answer. 
Of numerous witnesses, we have time to examine 
only one. Let it be the apostle Paul. He lived 
indeed eighteen hundred years ago, but he has left 
among many letters four which are completely avail- 
able for our purpose, because their genuineness and 
authenticity are universally admitted by scholars, 

* Westcott, "The Gospel of the Resurrection," p. 136. 



THEORIES OF THE RESURRECTION. 131 

skeptical as well as Christian. In every one of these 
(Romans, I. and II. Corinthians, and Galatians) he 
alludes to the Resurrection of Christ as an indisputa- 
ble fact. For example, turn to I. Corinthians xv., 
where he writes : " I delivered unto you first of all 
that which I also received, how that Christ died for 
our sins, . . . and that he was buried, and that he 
rose again the third day according to the Scriptures : 
and that he was seen of Cephas, then of the twelve : 
after that, he was seen of above five hundred breth- 
ren at once ; of whom the greater part remain unto 
this present, but some are fallen asleep. After that, 
he was seen of James ; then of all the apostles. And 
last of all he was seen of me also, as of one born out 
of due time." 

Now consider the force of this testimony. This 
epistle, the genuineness of which is questioned by 
no one, is acknowledged to have been written within 
about twenty -five years after the death and alleged 
Resurrection of Jesus. It refers to the period of St. 
Paul's conversion, which was within ten years after 
that event. It is as if he had said: "Ten years 
after the death of Christ, I, who had been a zealous 
and conscientious persecutor of the religion of Jesus 
of Nazareth, was converted to Christianity by a rev- 
elation of the risen Jesus to me on the way to Damas- 
cus. I had, moreover, the testimony of various per- 
sons who had seen him after his Resurrection." 



132 CHRIST AND MODERN UNBELIEF. 

It is not too much to say that the conversion 
of St. Paul is alone a distinct and sufficient proof 
of the reality of the Resurrection and of the truth 
of the Christian religion. I can perfectly under- 
stand how it came to pass that Lord Lyttleton, 
who undertook to demonstrate the falsity of Chris- 
tianity by the story of this conversion of the chief 
representative of Judaism, was by the study of that 
remarkable event himself converted into a firm be- 
liever in the divine origin of the religion he sought 
to overthrow. 

By one flash of conviction this bitter enemy and 
relentless persecutor of the Christians is changed 
into as zealous a preacher and propagator of the 
faith, against all his cherished beliefs, in the face of 
every worldly interest, at the cost of every intellect- 
ual ambition. And from that day forward to the 
end of his life, during thirty stormy years, he faced 
persecution and contumely, hardships and losses, 
imprisonment and death, for the sake of this Jesus 
of Nazareth whom he had before hated and perse- 
cuted ! All this he tells us in these unchallenged 
documents that lie before us. And the explanation 
of this marvelous transformation of this brilliant 
young Jewish rabbi, the idol and the hope of his 
people, into a Christian ? One word tells the story, 
he had " seen the Lord Jesus Christ" (I. Cor. ix.). The 
risen glorified Lord had appeared to him, appre- 



THEORIES OF THE RESURRECTION. 133 

hended him, spoken to him. As to this fact Paul 
never wavered. It was wrought into his very soul. 
It was the most intense conviction of his being. It 
became the dominant force in his life. Surely this 
man was a competent witness ! " He was not sepa- 
rated from the events, as we are, by centuries of time. 
He was not liable to be blinded, as we are, by the 
dazzling glamour of a victorious Christendom. He 
had mingled with men who had watched from Beth- 
lehem to Golgotha the life of the Crucified, not only 
with his simple-hearted followers, but with his 
learned and powerful enemies. He had talked with 
the priests who had consigned him to the cross ; he 
had put to death the followers who had wept beside 
his tomb. He had to face the unutterable horror 
which to any orthodox Jew was involved in the 
thought of a Messiah who had hung upon a tree. 
He had heard again and again the proofs which 
satisfied an Annas and a Gamaliel that Jesus was 
a deceiver of the people. The events on which the 
apostles relied in proof of his divinity had taken 
place in the full blaze of contemporary knowledge. 
He had not to deal with uncertainties of criticism 
or assaults on authenticity. He could question no1 
ancient documents, but living men. . . . He had 
thousands of means close at hand to test the reality 
or unreality of the Resurrection, in which up to this 
time he had so passionately disbelieved. In accept- 



134 CHRIST AND MODERN UNBELIEF. 

ing this half-crushed and wholly execrated faith he 
had everything in the world to lose — he had nothing 
conceivable to gain -, and yet, in spite of all, over- 
whelmed by a conviction he felt to be irresistible, 
Said the Pharisee became a witness of the Besurrec- 
tion, a preacher of the cross." * 

But his witness does not stand alone. He enu- 
merates six appearances of our Lord after his resur- 
rection — five besides that which he himself witnessed. 

Two of these were to individual apostles, namely, 
Peter and James. Two of them w r ere to all the apos- 
tles. One of them was to five hundred brethren at 
once, of whom the greater part were still alive at the 
time Paul wrote. 

Now we know (again from these unchallenged his- 
torical documents, the four first epistles of Paul) 
that he had intimate intercourse with, both St. Peter 
and St. James, as well as the other apostles, and was 
in familiar relations with the Christians of Jerusa- 
lem. Hence this passage gives us all the assurance 
that the honesty and capacity of this witness can 
give to the fact that Jesus had frequently appeared 
to those who knew him well, and that there was in 
the numerous Christian communities already formed, 
as well as in Jerusalem itself, a firm persuasion and 
conviction that he had risen from the dead. More- 
over, this fact was not incidental to their faith, but 

* Farrar's "St. Paul," p. 115. 



THEORIES OF THE BESUBEECTIOX. 135 

was the most prominent article it contained. The 
church was built upon it as its foundation. Upon 
this it rested. From this came its vigorous life, its 
conquering energy, its triumphant hope. Wherever 
the apostles and evangelists went, they preached 
Jesus and the Resurrection. And the intensity of con- 
viction which we have seen characterized St. Paul's 
conviction in regard to it appears to have been char- 
acteristic of the entire church. What account, then, 
are we to give, as reasonable men, of testimony such 
as this ? Is it valid, and is it sufficient to establish 
the fact of the Eesurrection ? 

If not, why not ? 

Will it be suggested that the whole story was a 
fabrication, and these men — above all, Paul himself 
— deliberate impostors ? If any man entertains that 
idea, let him read Paley's " Evidences," and he will 
find that powerful reasoner has completely demol- 
ished that theory. It has not a foot to stand on after 
his vigorous assault. I cannot repeat his arguments 
here. But it is unnecessary. Let any candid man 
read these epistles of the great Apostle to the Gen- 
tiles and ask himself whether such writings are those 
of an impostor? In fact, however, the leaders of 
the most advanced infidelity have long since aban- 
doned the idea that the apostles intended to deceive 
their readers, or to practice a pious fraud. 

" History," says Baur, "must bold to the assertion 



136 CHRIST AND MODERN UNBELIEF. 

that to the faith of the disciples the Resurrection of 
Jesus Christ was a f act, certain and indisputable. It 
is in this faith only that Christianity found a ground 
solid enough to erect upon it the superstructure of 
its whole historic development." And Strauss de- 
clares that "the historian must acknowledge that 
the disciples firmly believed that Jesus was risen." 
He refers to the passage before us in these words : 
" The fact that the apostle Paul heard from the mouth 
of Peter, of James, and of others besides, that Jesus 
had appeared to them, and that they all, and the five 
hundred brethren also, were absolutely convinced 
that they had seen Jesus living after he had died, is 
one which we will not call in question." 

The theory of imposture or pious fraud as an ex- 
planation of the apostolic testimony to the Resurrec- 
tion need no longer be reckoned with. It has been 
abandoned by intelligent skeptics. 

New theories have been advanced to evade the ac- 
knowledgment of the reality of the fact for which 
the martyrs gave up their lives. Let us examine 
them. 

1. It has been suggested that there was no resur- 
rection, but a resuscitation; that Jesus was not dead, 
but had swooned from exhaustion, and that when 
he had been taken down from the cross and wrapped 
in fine linen and laid in the tomb of Joseph, he after- 
ward revived, and so appeared to his disciples. 



THEORIES OF THE RESURRECTION. 137 

This hypothesis is beset with palpable improbabil- 
ities, or rather impossibilities. That a man whose 
vital energies had been subjected to the drain of that 
terrible night of mental and physical suffering pre- 
ceding the crucifixion — the agony in the garden, the 
arrest, the two trials, the buffeting, the scourging — 
that frightful and exhausting punishment — should 
have revived after hanging six hours on the cruel 
cross and after the spear had been thrust into his 
heart, and thirty-six hours later, having been in the 
meantime without food or drink, have been so vigor- 
ous and full of force as to appear to the disciples as 
the very Lord of life and glory — this surely is the 
very utmost limit of absurdity. Strauss is too clear- 
eyed to accept such a monstrous improbability. He 
exclaims : " A man half dead, dragging himself in 
languor and exhaustion out of his tomb, with wounds 
requiring careful and continuous medical treatment 
— could he in such a state have produced upon the 
minds of the disciples the impression that he was 
the victor over death and the grave — the Prince of 
life ? . . . Such a return to life could only have served 
to weaken the impressions which Jesus had in his 
former life made upon their minds, . . . and could 
never have turned their sorrow into enthusiasm and 
intensified their admiration into adoration." # 

* Quoted by Godet. Lectures in defense of tin 1 Christian 
faith, p. 32. 



138 CHRIST AND MODERN UNBELIEF. 

Nor are these all the incongruities involved in this 
hypothesis. Were it the true explanation we should 
be confronted by several awkward questions : What 
became of Jesus after his resuscitation from the 
swoon ? Did he die as other men ? If so, how are 
we to account for the joyful confidence of his dis- 
ciples in his triumph over death? " Christ, being 
raised from the dead, dieth no more," was their tri- 
umphant confidence. 

Again : Did the disciples ever discover their mis- 
take in supposing that Jesus had really died and 
really risen from the dead ? If so, they were guilty 
of imposture in adhering to the proclamation of his 
resurrection. If not, we are confronted by a more 
shocking alternative still : Jesus himself was an im- 
postor in permitting them to believe him risen from 
the dead, when in fact he had only recovered from 
a swoon. 

It is safe to say that neither of these opinions 
could muster a corporal's guard in its defense among 
intelligent and educated critics to-day, however un- 
friendly they might be to Christianity. 

2. What remains, then, to those who still deny 
that the universal faith of the Church in the Resur- 
rection rests upon the rock of truth? Is not the 
case closed against them ? " Not yet ! " they answer. 
" There is still a hypothesis which meets the con- 
ditions of the case without compelling us to believe 



THEORIES OF THE RESURRECTION. 139 

the alleged miracle of the Resurrection. It is possi- 
ble that Mary Magdalene, who seems to have been 
the first witness of the so-called Resurrection, being 
of an enthusiastic temperament (of this, by the way 
there is no evidence), and laboring under mental 
disease (another assumption), fancied that she saw 
Jesus the morning of the third day when she went 
to the sepulcher. It is further possible that the dis- 
ciples were so excited by this story repeated to them 
by the Magdalene that they also, one after another 
and then collectively, fell victims to the same delu- 
sion, and fancied they too saw him risen from the 
dead. It is again possible that these visions spread, 
almost like an epidemic, among the followers of 
Jesus, who, being credulous persons, accepted them 
as realities, and became so firmly persuaded of them 
that they devoted their lives to the preaching of this 
extraordinary occurrence, and built upon it the 
splendid structure of the Christian Church, which 
has filled the ages with miracles of beneficent ac- 
tivity." 

This is the theory of visions, and reasonable men 
are asked to accept it as a plausible explanation of 
the facts asserted by St. Paul, and a satisfactory 
account of the origin of the mightiest moral agency 
ever planted on this earth ! Now let us confront this 
theory with some of the facts of the case. 

(1) Neither Mary Magdalene nor the apostles were 



140 CREIST AND MODERN UNBELIEF. 

in the state of mind favorable to such a vision as 
this hypothesis supposes. The narrative which is 
quoted for the fact of her visit to the sepulcher in- 
forms us that she was profoundly depressed, and so 
far from being predisposed to believe in his resurrec- 
tion, that when he did appear she supposed him to 
be the gardener. The same is true of the disciples 
generally. The women went to the tomb to embalm 
the dead body ; and when they reported his resurrec- 
tion to the disciples, these refused to believe the 
fact. " Their words seemed to them as idle tales, 
and they believed them not" (Luke xxiv. 11). The 
same was true of the two disciples journeying to 
Emmaus. They were sad and sorrowful, they had 
abandoned faith and hope in Jesus. "We trusted 
it had been he which should have redeemed Israel. 77 
In all the extant narratives this utter paralysis of 
faith and hope on the part of the disciples stands 
out clear and unmistakable. Far from being pre- 
disposed to believe his resurrection, they were slow 
to believe. " O fools and slow of heart to believe ! 77 
were the words of Jesus. " He upbraided them with 
their unbelief." Thomas would not believe until he 
had palpable proof, not by his sense of sight merely, 
but of touch as well. An able writer of our time 
has pointed out the fact that " according to well- 
established principles of mental philosophy three 
mental states are necessary to enable even the most 



THEORIES OF THE EESUBEECTIOX. 141 

enthusiastic and credulous persons to mistake sub- 
jective impressions for external realities. These are 
prepossession, fixed idea, and expectancy." But 
there is not only no evidence of the existence of 
these mental states ; there is distinct and abundant 
evidence of the existence of an opposite condition of 
mind. 

(2) Look at another fact. This " vision " spoke to 
them, held long conversations with them, walked 
with them in broad daylight, gave them extended 
instruction as to the propagation of the gospel and 
the constitution of his Church. Is this consistent 
with what we know of other instances of mental 
hallucination ? Surely if these Galilean fishermen, 
under the influence of enthusiasm and credulity, 
and affected by morbid mental conditions, could 
evolve in their disordered fancy the program of the 
mightiest social and moral and religious organism 
the world has ever known, it is time to proclaim that 
mental hallucinations are to be sought after as the 
fruitful sources of wisdom, and the morbid mind is 
to be looked to as the parent of the most beneficent 
plans for the well-being of mankind. 

(3) Test this theory again by the fact that the 
Apostle affirms in this never-disputed document (I. 
Corinthians) that the risen Christ was seen on two 
occasions by all the apostles, and again by five 
hundred brethren at once. Is this within the limits 



142 CBRIST AND MODERN UNBELIEF. 

of the wildest imagination — that eleven persons 
should at the same moment fancy that they saw the 
same person, and that he spoke to them, and spoke 
the same words ? And that they all imagined that 
he ate and drank with them on purpose to convince 
them of the reality of his appearance — that it was 
not a phantom they saw, but their well-beloved 
Master himself? Even this does not represent the 
full extent of the demand upon our credulity which 
this hypothesis makes. For it asks us to suppose 
that in broad daylight five hundred persons had 
simultaneously the same hallucination — beheld the 
same vision, and heard this phantom speak to them 
in the same words ! Who is credulous enough to 
believe such an explanation of the admitted fact that 
these persons believed they saw and conversed with, 
and ate with, and listened to, the same Jesus whom 
they had known and loved before his crucifixion ! 

(4) But if all these objections could be met, or 
ignored, there is still another which interposes an 
insuperable barrier to the acceptance of the theory 
of visions as an explanation of the Resurrection. It 
is this : upon that hypothesis, what became of the 
body of Jesus ? 

Eemember the state of the case. St. Paul's un- 
disputed testimony (not to refer to any other) estab- 
lishes the fact that the supposed Resurrection took 
place on the third clay after his crucifixion. If, then, 



THEORIES OF TEE RESURRECTION. 143 

the body did not rise, but remained in the custody 
of the disciples, the stories of its resurrection would 
quickly have been dissipated by the inexorable fact 
of the existence of the dead body. If under those 
circumstances they had continued to preach the 
Resurrection, they would plainly have been guilty of 
a willful and deliberate imposture — a supposition 
which has been abandoned, as I have shown, by al- 
most all intelligent and educated skeptics. If, on 
the other hand, the body was in the custody of the 
Romans or the Jews, why was it not produced to 
confound the deluded disciples who were turning the 
world upside down preaching that Jesus had risen 
from the dead ? Only a few weeks elapsed between 
the crucifixion and the day of Pentecost when all 
Jerusalem was in an uproar over this new doctrine 
of Jesus and the Resurrection. Now it was of the 
greatest importance to the Jews to confute the 
teachers of this sect of the Nazarenes ; and had they 
produced the body of Jesus, they would have com- 
pletely overwhelmed them. For then they would 
have been found false witnesses of God in testi- 
fying that Jesus was risen, or else all men would 
have pitied or despised them as deluded dream- 
ers; and so they would have lost all credit with 
the people, and the new sect would have been 
strangled at its birth. Argument, authority, im- 
prisonment, scourging, would all alike have been 



144 CHRIST AND MODERN UNBELIEF. 

unnecessary to crash these deluded fanatics who 
were doing such mischief to their cherished customs 
and institutions. By simply exhibiting the dead 
body in public their aim would have been reached. 
There would have been an end of Christianity there 
and then, and once for all ! But this they did not, 
because they could not, do. 

Thus neither friends nor enemies could produce 
the body. What, then, is the rational conclusion ? 
The body had disappeared, because Jesus had indeed 
risen from the dead. The disciples were not deluded 
by the phantom of an excited brain. Those numer- 
ous appearances were realities; and the Christian 
Church was not founded on the hallucination of an 
hysterical woman. The mightiest moral agency the 
world has ever seen did not spring from a delusion 
— a chance trick of the senses. The courage and the 
faith, the rugged strength and the patient endurance 
that conquered the world, were not born of the 
phantoms of disordered brains. The practical sense, 
the well-poised judgment, the lucidity of thought, 
the invulnerable dialectics of the author of the epis- 
tles to the Romans and the Corinthians did not flow 
from a mind so morbid in its action as to be unable 
to distinguish between a fancy and a fact. 

We may fairly claim, then, that the skeptical 
theories put forward to account for the belief in the 
Resurrection break down under their own weight ; 
and we are left to consider whether the evidence 



THEORIES OF TEE RESURRECTION. 145 

does not constrain us to accept the Fact as the solu- 
tion of the Belief. And then this stupendous miracle, 
which had seemed, it may be, a chief burden and dif- 
ficulty in the way, stands out in its true light as an 
independent — yes, and sufficient — evidence of the 
truth of Christianity. Then we see indeed that 
" Jesus Christ was declared to be the Son of God 
with power by the Kesurrection from the dead." For 
we cannot forget, while considering the special evi- 
dence for the Resurrection, what we have already 
seen as to the character and teaching and work of 
this Jesus of Nazareth. " He spake as never man 
spake." He lived as never man lived. He has 
wrought in history as never man wrought. All this 
we must carry with us in inquiring whether he was 
indeed raised from the dead. So doing, we cannot 
be doubtful of the answer. With St. Peter we must 
hail him as the Prince of life, and with him per- 
ceive an inherent necessity for the Resurrection. " He 
could not be holden of death." . 

Yes, the evidence before us goes to prove a fact 
which in truth was to have been expected, which 
was in the deepest sense natural. For that he who 
came to redeem mankind from sin and death should 
have triumphed over death, and given a sorrowing 
and doubting world a palpable instance of life and 
immortality, to be for all ages the triumphant assur- 
ance that man shall conquer death and dissolution— 
this surely is in harmony with both the nature of 



146 CHRIST AND MODERN UNBELIEF. 

the Redeemer and the need of the redeemed. Such 
an One as he could not but have risen from the 
dead. Death could not have enduring dominion 
over the Prince of life. 

And so I bring these lectures to a close. None 
of my readers can feel more than I do how inade- 
quate they are to the length and depth and height 
and breadth of the great theme of which they treat. 
But let it be remembered that I did not set out to 
make a full and complete presentation of the argu- 
ments for believing in the divine origin of the 
Christian religion, nor to defend or establish the 
whole circle of its doctrines, but to give, in a short 
compass, sufficient reasons for believing the central 
truth of Christianity, viz., that Jesus Christ is a Su- 
perhuman Being, yea, the very Son of God himself. 
This, I humbly trust, I have succeeded in doing. 
Let the candid reader judge whether the arguments 
here adduced do not make it evident that, without 
assuming the authority or inspiration of the Script- 
ures or the certainty of the miracles there recorded, 
we have in the undeniable facts of history — in the 
Character of Christ, in the Words of Christ, in the 
Work of Christ, and finally in his Resurrection — 
conclusive evidence that he was more than man, 
that he was, as he claimed, the Son of God mighty 
to save. 



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